Lobos lose amid chaos
With coach on his way out and roster crumbling, loss to Colorado State another blight on dreary season
Lame-duck Lobos basketball coach Paul Weir made his first official on-camera appearance Wednesday night since he and the University of New Mexico mutually decided over the weekend to part ways at season’s end.
Sitting at a table inside Moby Arena in Fort Collins, Colo., he didn’t stick around long for a postgame news conference after his team was beaten 87-73 by Big Dance bubble candidate Colorado State. It lasted all of 97 seconds. Taking no questions and hardly pausing long enough to gather his thoughts, Weir ceded his chair to assistant coach Ralph Davis and quickly disappeared from view.
“When I released my statement, that was really going to be my last comment on me and the Lobos,” Weir began. “I would really like my staff members to have the spotlight the rest of the way.”
Weir was referring to a lengthy letter he posted to UNM’s official basketball Twitter account Tuesday morning, one in which he thanked his supporters. He also thanked the university for allowing him to seek another job without risking a forfeiture of his $490,000 buyout that will come in a pair of $245,000 payments over the next two years.
Had Weir taken any kind of inquiries from the media after Wednesday’s game, they likely would have centered around the team’s crumbling roster. Only six scholarship players showed up to practice Monday and those same half dozen players joined a handful of walk-ons to Colorado for the game.
As much as Davis tried to laud his players for the effort they showed against a CSU team that will land in some variation of a postseason tournament in two weeks, the version of UNM’s roster was but a shell of the team Weir constructed to start this season.
And what a weird, woeful season it’s been. Banished to train and play out of state due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Lobos lost their mental sharpness almost as soon as they realized they’d never play a game in The Pit, let alone spend any considerable time sleeping in their own beds and practicing in their own facility.
Wednesday’s loss dropped UNM to 6-15 overall and 2-15 in the Mountain West Conference. The latter mark ensures a lastplace finish in the regular season and a No. 11 seed in next week’s MWC Tournament in Las Vegas, Nev.
For a program with four MWC Tournament titles to its credit, the 2020-21 season has been a nightmare.
Weir preempted any questions about his roster, saying, “I know there’s probably questions about our roster and who was available tonight. It’s a very fluid situation. There’s been a lot of change, a very unique season. I’m giving certain players on our team some space to process what’s going on. I’m hopeful they will return again this season but right now our focus and our energy has been on the guys that were on this trip.”
Four scholarship players did not make the trip: Bayron Matos, Valdir Manuel and Rod Brown, each of who were fixtures in the starting lineup. Also absent was sophomore Kurt Wegscheider. Brown had been dealing with a leg injury, but his absence along with the 6-foot-9 Matos and 6-11 Manuel left virtually no inside presence for the roster that remained.
The only scholarship player not in Wednesday’s starting lineup was Emmanuel Kuac, the tallest player on the active roster at 6-7. Walk-ons Eloy Medina, Logan Padgett, Clay Patterson and Daniel Headdings all saw action, with Medina — a freshman from Albuquerque’s West Mesa High School — hitting a pair of 3-pointers to finish with six points.
He said afterward that handling Weir’s dismissal hasn’t been easy.
“I mean, you can’t really handle something like this,” Medina said. “You just take it day by day and just play it out how it is.”
To say the game went how one might expect would be accurate. After the Lobos fell behind by double digits in the first five minutes, they rallied to tie it at 20. Colorado State then rattled off a 21-2 run in less than five minutes, hitting 10 straight shots.
UNM did manage to stay within 20 for most of the final 25 minutes but never mounted a serious threat.
Senior Makuach Maluach was his usual steady self, producing team-highs with 20 points and eight rebounds. Jeremiah Francis had 10 points and was the only other Lobo in double figures.
At 17-4 overall, Colorado State finished tied with San Diego State for first place in the MWC with a 14-3 league mark, but SDSU will get the top seed in the Mountain West Tournament based on a tiebreaker. CSU will be No. 2.
Numerous NCAA Tournament projections forecast between two and four MWC teams making it to the Big Dance, along with Utah State and Boise State.
As the No. 11 seed for the conference tournament, UNM is in line to play UNLV in the opening round Wednesday.
Just finishing out the season knowing there is no certainty beyond next week’s tournament, Davis said it hasn’t been much fun the last few days.
“Challenging, to say the least,” he said. “But we have an obligation this program, these young men, ourselves, the university to go out and represent as best we possibly can no matter what it may be. So, you get obstacles in life and whether you’re expecting them or not you have to go out and perform and do what’s best.”