Trouble is not new for New Mex. St.

SMALL wonder that New Mexico State University has suspended basketball operations to continue investigating, among several serious misdeeds, a fatal road-trip shooting of a New Mexico student by NMSU player Mike Peake, who was also shot.

The team bus then allegedly fled town before it was pulled over by police. Peake, a 6-foot-7 forward from Chicago, was with his third NCAA team, having transferred to Austin Peay from Georgia before transferring to NMSU.

New Mexico State’s basketball program has long had the rep as a whatever-it-takes bottom-feeder. Late Nets star “Super John” Williamson was recruited by NMSU, then spent two seasons there, making it to his sophomore year despite evidence that he was, at best, semi-literate.

In 2018, NMSU made the NCAA Tournament. Its roster included recruits from France, Australia and Trinidad and Tobago. But the season’s big get was guard Zach Lofton, who averaged 20 points.

Lofton played for three high schools and five colleges, was suspended from one for “misconduct” and arrived at NMSU as a “graduate transfer.” Thus he was a one-and-done at five colleges.

The NMSU athletic director Mario Moccia hit the roof when I wrote that his school’s inclusion in the NCAA Tournament didn’t pass even a minimal stink test. We decided that the future will decide. Last heard from, Lofton left “graduate school” and eventually played in Lebanon. And on Feb. 12, the school canceled the remainder of its season.

➤ The Phoenix Open last week again featured the pandering of CBS and Golf Channel announcers who, off the air, can’t stand the annual drunken, cupthrowing rowdiness beside the par-3 16th, but on the air claim to love it! So they’d choose to sit among them? One issue never explored, verbally or visually, is how all the young and inebriated return to where they came from. Do they drive?

But if TV folks ignore the driving habits of Tiger Woods, why not those of PGA galleries?

➤ Analysis of the Week: Reader Pat Esposito nominates ESPN’s condescending know-it-all Jay Bilas — who said, after Auburn hit a 3 in a loss to Alabama, that “Auburn needed to hit some shots to win this game.”

Question for NBC’s Al Roker: Did you really think that Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime performance was terrific? Did it really meet, let alone surpass, your standard of entertainment as witnessed by 113 million men, women and children?