Can it be any worse? History says yes
1957-58 team went winless in league
Certainly, as the 2020-21 University of New Mexico men’s basketball team lurches toward an as-yet undetermined finish line, comparisons to Lobo struggles of the past seem inevitable.
Is the current team the worst ever? If not, which team of yesteryear has that dubious distinction?
To make those comparisons in a vacuum, though, might seem frivolous and perhaps even a bit cruel. To validate such an enterprise, context is important.
What are the differences? Where are the common threads? What did it take, what will it take, to rebuild?
So, then, as for that dreaded designation of worst ever:
Current Lobos (5-11 overall, 1-11 in Mountain West Conference play), you are safe. Your one conference win lifts you beyond consideration. Besides, a possible early end to the season could prevent further damage.
The 1939-40 Lobos (3-22, 1-15 Border Conference), the 1956-57 team (5-21, 1-13 Skyline Conference) and the 1958-59 edition (3-19, 1-13 Skyline) are deemed safe as well by the same standard.
As for the Lobogate scandalridden Lobos of 1979-80 (6-22, 3-11 Western Athletic), not even close. A juggernaut by comparison.
All of which leads us to our unlucky loser/winner: the 1957-58 Lobos, who went 3-21 overall and 0-14 in the Skyline. They are the only UNM team to play an entire season without a league victory.
How, though, did the ’57-58 Lobos and the program descend to such a low ebb? When, how soon and how completely did the program recover?
The history
After the 1954-55 season, UNM coach Woody Clements resigned. Clements was well regarded throughout the region as one who got the most out of what limited talent he had at hand. He’d achieved great success in the old Border Conference; it was he who brought back the program from the horrid 1939-40 season to a 14-2 overall record and a Border championship with a perfect 12-0 league mark in 1944-45.
Entry into the Skyline (officially the Mountain States Athletic Conference) in 1951, however, brought with it stiffer competition. Clements stepped down after going 7-17 and 2-12 in ’54-55.
Who, then, to hire? Based on the information available, it appears UNM focused on one man and one alone: Clovis High coach Bill Stockton.
Stockton, 41 at the time, had compiled an impressive résumé within the state but had no prior college coaching experience.
A former Lobo player, he’d led the Border Conference in scoring in 1935-36. In eight years at Clovis, he’d won two state titles and finished twice as the runner-up.
The school had no athletic director at the time — Pete McDavid was hired as AD the following January — and Stockton’s hiring was overseen by the Board of Regents with the approval of UNM President Tom Popejoy. Or, perhaps, vice versa. Whether a wider net ever was cast in the search process is unclear.
The Lobos went 6-16, 5-9 in the Skyline, in Stockton’s first season. Without the presence of Toby Roybal, a Santa Fean who still ranks as among the program’s all-time greats, the record would have been far worse.
Roybal, a 6-foot-2 senior guard, averaged 20.4 points per game in ’55-56. That average included a 45-point burst, at the time a UNM and Skyline Conference record, in a victory over Montana.
In ’56-57, with Roybal gone, the Lobos dipped to 5-21 and 1-13. Still, entering the ’57-58 season, UNM was projected for a middle-of-the-pack finish. This cautious optimism was based in part on the opening of Johnson Gymnasium, the school’s new, 7,800-capacity venue. Stockton, noting that 6-6 senior forward John Teel would be joined by 6-7 sophomore center Dick Peterson up front, was more optimistic still.
The first clue that Stockton’s optimism was ill-founded: the Lobo varsity lost to its own freshman team, 56-48, on Dec. 3. Freshmen were ineligible for varsity competition at the time.
Even so, just as did the 2020-21 Lobos, the ’57-58 team got off to a decent start — though against lesser competition. The Lobos won three of their first five, beating Western New Mexico, Hamline University of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Cal Poly.
They would lose the remaining 19 games on the schedule.
Why? As is always the case, college basketball success, and failure, begins and ends with recruiting. Teel, a Carlsbad product, was the Makuach Maluach of his day — the team’s only consistent scorer. Possessed of an accurate, line-drive jump shot, he did most of his damage from the perimeter. Junior Myrl “Rusty” Goodwin, a 6-5 forward from Colorado, also averaged in double figures. But Peterson, even before he was declared academically ineligible in early February, made little impact.
The nadir arrived in early January, when Wyoming guard Tony Windis scored 50 points in a 101-61 Cowboys win in Laramie.
“We beat (Windis) by 11,” Stockton said, engaging in some gallows humor.
That was UNM’s Skyline season opener, and things got no better. As the season deteriorated, all but two of UNM’s 14 conference defeats came by double digits.
If there’d been any doubt that Stockton would be fired, the coach himself removed it with a Feb. 13 tirade launched at the UNM administration. The school’s academic eligibility standards for athletes were more stringent than those of the conference, Stockton said, handcuffing him in recruiting.
“With a situation such as we have at the university,” he said, “no coach could have a winning program . ... You can’t make a team out of engineers.”
Stockton resigned on March 7, two days before the season finale — a 77-55 loss to Brigham Young. He’d spoken out of frustration in February, he said, and wished the school only success.
It fell to McDavid, then, to revive with a solid hire a program that hadn’t had a winning season since 1950-51. He interviewed six candidates, he said that April, before settling on 30-year-old Bob Sweeney as Stockton’s successor.
Sweeney, a former Santa Fe High star, had been Stockton’s assistant and freshman coach — taking the freshmen to an 18-5 record over two years. The 1957-58 freshmen, the group that had beaten the varsity, had gone 9-1.
Despite his youth, Sweeney came in with more applicable experience than Stockton had. He’d been head coach at St. Michael’s College in Santa Fe for five years before taking the assistant’s position at UNM.
Unfortunately for Sweeney, three of the five best players on his talented ’57-58 freshman team, Mel Lye, Don Williams and Dick Cundy, never suited up for the varsity. Without Teel and Goodwin, who transferred to Idaho State, Sweeney went 3-19 and 1-13 in ’58-59.
Things improved thereafter, but only marginally, as Sweeney mined the juniorcollege ranks. The Lobos went a combined 18-56 overall, 9-33 in Skyline play, over the next three years.
Sweeney resigned on March 4, 1962. Despite the program’s longstanding doldrums, interest in the position abounded. Just 11 days after Sweeney’s resignation, McDavid said he’d received 62 applications.
Among the suitors was Johnny Dee, a former Alabama coach who in 1964 would be hired at Notre Dame. Jim McGregor, a coach of international stature, also applied.
On March 28, 38-year-old Bob King, an assistant at Iowa, was announced as UNM’s new coach. Among his first acts: the signing of a 6-8½ junior college center named Ira Harge. Neither Stockton nor Sweeney had been able to land a quality big man.
Nine times in their combined seven seasons, Stockton and Sweeney’s UNM teams had given up 100 points or more. But with Harge as King’s eraser in the paint, the new coach installed a relentless pressure manto-man defense.
King went 16-9 in his first season. In his second, the Lobos were 23-6, shared a Western Athletic Conference title and reached the final of the National Invitation Tournament. Thus began what came to be known as Lobomania. King’s program quickly outgrew Johnson Gym, and University Arena — The Pit — opened in 1966.
Since, the program has had ups and downs and one devastating scandal. But there’s never been a team as hapless as the 1957-58 Lobos. Now, as for what in all this is applicable today, and how:
Like Stockton in ’57-58, Lobos coach Paul Weir — strategy be hanged — simply didn’t have enough good players in 2020-21. Recruiting, recruiting, recruiting.
And as with Sweeney, though for different reasons, player attrition has crippled Weir’s attempts to build a winner.
Three years were all Stockton got. Sweeney, four. Weir is finishing his fourth year at UNM.
Will he get a fifth?
It’s fair, more than fair, to note that he and his Lobos have played this season under circumstances more burdensome than has any team in program history. New Mexico’s COVID-19 restrictions have kept them on the road from start to finish.
Still, once the ball goes up, such considerations fly out the window.
You either win or you lose.