Lobos hitting reset after collapse of team loaded with talent
After team loaded with transfer talent collapsed following fast start, Weir looks ahead with younger, unheralded group
Pick the sport — whichever one you want, choice is yours — and you’ll easily find a coach who’s suffering through what could be described as the longest offseason of his or her life. Nowhere is that more true than inside The Pit, the home of the University of New Mexico men’s basketball program. Coming off what is one of the most bizarre and frustrating seasons in recent memory, the Lobos enter the dreaded rebuilding mode for the third time in less than a decade.
UNM has gone six straight years without making a postseason tournament or recording a single 20-win campaign. They are streaks equaled by the lack of any player in cherry and silver getting picked in the NBA Draft.
The cornerstone for the immediate future is the current senior class of Makuach Maluach, Zane Martin and Keith McGee. Pretty much everyone else on the roster — including the potential inclusion of Santa Fe High’s J.B. White — is either brand new or barely used in head coach Paul Weir’s system.
Sitting in the relative calm of his office inside the Rudy Davalos Center earlier this week, Weir admitted the recently completed season is one for the books for all the wrong reasons.
“It’s probably a season I’ll never forget just because of the talent we accumulated,” he said. “It was probably the most talented team in college I’d ever been around, and [I] was so excited to be able to kind of coach and morph and guide that team to wherever it was going to go. But things happen.”
In the case of the 2019-20 Lobos, a lot of things happened. Of the 16 players who lined up for the team photo just before the season opener, half are gone. Two of the eight returners were walk-ons, one was sitting through a redshirt and two others barely played.
Of those gone, one quit, two were thrown off the team and three more decided to transfer, while the final pair graduated.
Martin and Maluach figure to be UNM’s go-to players to start next season, with each hoping to flourish in roles that will utilize their skills more than what was done in the past. Martin’s first season after transferring from Towson saw him struggle after being forced into the point guard’s spot, while Maluach again served as the jack-of-all-trades swingman who had to fill in at power forward, small forward and the wing.
The idea, Weir said, is to let the team’s collective talent dictate the style next year instead of the skills of each individual player.
In other words, get back to employing the style he used in his first season at UNM, one in which his scheme was molded around a group mentality. Last year’s Lobos were dominated by wildly talented players who didn’t do well when the spotlight wasn’t on them.
It led to an off-kilter dynamic that saw the team start 15-3 and then lose 11 of its last 15 games as off-court drama nuked all the momentum.
Loaded with the kind of talent that had Weir dreaming big, the Lobos instead had a massive flameout that leaves the entire coaching staff on the hot seat. Much of the blame has been placed on the recruitment of Division I transfers, of whom the bulk of last season’s roster was built.
“I think the thing that happened last year can get associated to transfers as a whole, but I do think that’s a little bit too overgeneralized,” Weir said.
He has taken a dramatically different approach to shaping the 2020-21 roster. Next year’s Lobos will be younger, smaller and far less experienced. They’ll also come without the kind of hype last year’s team did, which is probably their biggest attribute.
As of now, the only fresh recruit who’s a D-I transfer is former North Carolina point guard Jeremiah Francis, and he still hasn’t been cleared by the NCAA to participate next season. The Lobos will have at least four freshmen, five if White can graduate this summer and enroll at UNM by August.
“Now we’re kind of where we’ve got guys that are really built for this system,” Weir said.
Only time will tell.
LOBOS NOTES
Barring an unforeseen and, frankly, shocking selection of any Lobo in the June 25 NBA Draft, the earliest anyone from UNM would have his name called is 2021 — and that’s a considerable stretch given the current senior class. The last year any Lobo was picked was Cameron Bairstow in 2014. It would make for the program’s longest NBA Draft drought in more than half a century. Santa Fe High’s Toby Roybal was picked by the New York Knicks in 1956, with Ira Harge taken by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1964. The last time UNM went at least six years without a draft pick was 1999 (Kenny Thomas to the Houston Rockets) and 2005 (Danny Granger to the Indiana Pacers).