Aggies up
New Mexico State men can claim another WAC title with win today
LAS CRUCES — Winning Western Athletic Conference championships may seem like a given for New Mexico State basketball fans by now.
But while the Aggies have made seven NCAA Tournament appearances since 2007 via winning the WAC tournament, the Aggies have won just four regular-season titles during the same period.
“I understand people think that it’s our birthright to win the WAC, but the reality is we haven’t won it as often as people may think,” said Aggies secondyear head coach Chris Jans. “But because of the tournament success in Vegas, there is an image that we won the regular season every year.”
With a home win today against Texas Rio Grande Valley, Jans would clinch at least a share of his second straight regular-season title, as well as the No. 1 seed for the WAC Tournament.
Added Jans: “The conference tournament in a one-bid league is huge, and it’s what the average fan pays attention to. But for a
coach and a program to win a regularseason championship is harder to do because of the grind of the season.”
The Aggies won a share of the WAC regular season in Marvin Menzies’ first year in 2008. The Aggies were 12-4 in conference play, tying for the regular-season title with Boise State, Nevada and Utah State.
Menzies won two more regular-season championships outright in 2015 and 2016, going 13-1 in league play each year, winning the league by five games in 2015.
NMSU didn’t win another regularseason championship until Jans won the conference by two games last year at 12-2. The year before, under Paul Weir, NMSU finished 11-3 in league play, a game behind regular-season champion CSU Bakersfield.
NM State has won a WAC record seven tournament championships, but Utah currently owns the most regular-season championships with 12. BYU is second with 11, followed by UTEP (eight), Nevada (six) and New Mexico (five).
“Our goal is to win championships,” Jans said. “It’s going to be fun to talk to our guys about it leading up to the game and putting some pressure on ourselves to close it out and putting the No. 1 seed behind us. And then the next time to win the conference outright will be another challenge for us.”
The Aggies enter today’s game against UTRGV (16-13, 7-5) with a two-game lead over second place Grand Canyon.
The WAC is currently No. 14 according to KenPom, building on last year’s success when the WAC was No. 18.
But with seven of the Aggie’s WAC games decided by six points or fewer Jans said there is a small margin for error despite the cushion in the conference standings.
“I had no delusions of grandeur that we were going to walk through the league,” Jans said. “I’ll be honest to say that I’m surprised that we have the record that we have. We have been fortunate a couple times to win some close games.”
The No. 1 seed will open the men’s WAC tournament at 1 p.m., on March 14 at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, Nev.
“It gives us confidence as the No. 1 seed but we didn’t win a lot of the games by a lot, so it easily could have been the other way around,” Aggies guard Jabari Rice said.
The Aggies are the lone league contender for an at-large NCAA Tourament berth. It would be a slim chance, though the Associated Press’ Aaron Beard on Saturday wrote that NMSU is one of the teams on the bubble whose stock is rising.
“The Aggies (23-4, 11-1 Western Athletic Conference) lack a noteworthy win and sit at No. 58 in the NET,” he wrote, “but they haven’t lost since Jan. 3, either.”