Trakh leaving Aggies to return to USC
Women’s basketball coach won 104 games in six seasons with New Mexico State
New Mexico State began the work week by hiring its next men’s basketball coach. It ended with the Aggies losing their women’s coach.
Mark Trakh, who guided the Aggie women to the last three Western Athletic Conference championships, is leaving for his second stint at Southern Cal.
It left NMSU athletic director Mario Moccia to conduct another meeting with players who “are a little shellshocked,” he said Friday afternoon, “but it helps when the kids know that you care.”
Trakh replaces, Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, who resigned on March 3 after a 70-56 record in four years. The Trojans’ 2016-17 season ended at 14-16.
In six seasons at NMSU, Trakh was 104-80, including 57-33 in Western Athletic Conference play, but only two of those league losses came in the last three seasons.
“I’m appreciative of him and the many staff members in his tenure for their hard work and dedication, which resulted in an unprecedented three-year run,” Moccia said.
As a No. 15 seed in this past season’s NCAA Tourna-
ment, the Aggies led with six minutes to play before falling 72-64 to second-seeded Stanford, which reached the Final Four.
NMSU loses five seniors off that 24-7 team but can build around players like Brooke Salas, who lit up Stanford for 26 points. To say the Aggies job is better now than when Trakh took it “is a vast understatement,” Moccia said.
The late in the calendar coaching search begins for NMSU after another school dragged its feet before taking one of his coaches. On Monday, NMSU filled the last Division I men’s opening of the spring by hiring Chris Jans to replace Paul Weir, who came to New Mexico on April 11. The UNM men’s job came open March 31 as Craig Neal was dismissed, but three weeks after AD Paul Krebs said he would be retained.
Moccia said he will start the search by calling roughly the last five to 10 schools who made hires and ask about their finalists.
Trakh, 61 and with California roots, was 90-64 from 2004-09 at USC, then resigned and spent the next two seasons out of coaching before coming to Las Cruces.