Lobos on TV
UNM is 6-2 since Broncos blowout
UNM men’s basketball team prepares for Boise State, a game televised by ESPNU at the Pit.
Paul Weir isn’t much for reruns.
Yes, as a college basketball coach he may watch most game films over and over again, trying to find nuggets of useful information to try and pass on to his team.
But when he popped in the tape — or clicked on the video link on his laptop — of his team’s Jan. 3 road game at Boise State as he prepared for a Tuesday night rematch in Dreamstyle Arena with the secondplace team in the Mountain West, it didn’t take the Lobos head coach long to come to the realization it wasn’t doing him or his team any good.
“After about four or five minutes of myself watching the game tape, I turned it off,” said Weir, referring to the game his Lobos lost 90-62 in Boise, Idaho. “It was hard to watch. We didn’t play very well. I don’t think our team was in a very good place.”
They seem to be now. And that “good place” refers to far more than just the fact the rematch is in the Pit, where the Lobos
are 5-0 during league play this season and have won seven in a row overall.
Be it by dumb luck or some shrewd coaching decision, the Jan. 3 blowout road loss to Boise State (19-4, 9-2 Mountain West) served as a turning point for the Lobos (12-12, 7-4).
Since that time, UNM has gone 6-2 and finds itself alone in third place in a league race it was never supposed to be in.
That embarrassment in Taco Bell Arena included junior Troy Simons getting ejected for the second time this season, leading to a one-game suspension from the league and then an additional four-game suspension from Weir as the shooting guard addressed on-court anger issues. Simons had five points on 2-of-7 shooting, four fouls, two technicals and an ejection in 15 minutes.
That was also the last time junior Sam Logwood played until returning after a sevengame absence, both due to a shoulder injury and addressing off-court issues of his own, before Weir let him return this past Saturday. In that first Boise State game, Logwood had six points on 1-of-6 shooting and one rebound in 18 minutes.
“I thought that was a nice pivot moment for us in a lot of different ways, both on and off the court,” Weir said of that first matchup. “And I’d like to hope that we’re a different team than that right now.”
The coach’s discipline worked for the chemistry of the team, certainly, and the early indications on the returns to action of Simons and Logwood seem to reflect both are rejuvenated and refocused themselves.
But Weir had no idea how what he decided to do with Simons and Logwood at the time would affect his team, which after the first Boise State game was sitting with a record of 6-10 overall and 1-2 in league play.
By then, Weir, admittedly, had thought team chemistry wouldn’t have been an issue. Asked Monday if he thought getting to the “good place” his team is at now mentally would have taken this long, Weir admitted he did not.
“Me being either naive, arrogant, dumb, whatever you want to say – I didn’t think so,” Weir said. “I thought I could work magic or we could work magic and, you know, we’d be unbelievable. As I sit back and start to reflect myself, I start to realize when you have a brand new group of new players, in a new program with a new system, and a new a lot of things, sometimes it does take time. That’s not an excuse. I still need to be better to start seasons and that’s something I’ll work at. But in retrospect, yes. It took a little more time than I thought it would.”
STAT TO NOTE: In talking Monday about the things his team does well when winning, Weir noted, “We’re undefeated when we take 8 charges.”
UNM has taken eight or more charges five times this season.