Houston Chronicle Sunday

School pauses program for now

- By Eddie Pells Associated Press writer John Marshall contribute­d to this report.

New Mexico State indefinite­ly suspended its men's basketball program Friday night in a virtually unheard of move that the university says is unrelated to a fatal shooting involving one of its players last year.

The school also placed first-year coach Greg Heiar and his staff on administra­tive leave for what it said were violations of university policy and separate from the Nov. 19 shooting of a student from rival University of New Mexico. Aggies forward Mike Peake was suspended in early December while a third-party investigat­or looks into his involvemen­t in the shooting.

The shutdown of a Division I program in midseason for reasons other than a spate of injuries or, more recently, a COVID-19 outbreak, is virtually unheard of. SMU's football program canceled its 1988 season after the NCAA handed it the “death penalty” the year before, but that move was made before the season was underway.

New Mexico State's game against California Baptist on Saturday has been canceled, and it is unknown how many more of the team's five remaining games, all in the Western Athletic Conference, will also be wiped out.

Shortly after the shooting, Heiar loaded the team onto a bus and left town, minus Peake and three players who had picked him up and taken him to the hospital with leg injuries. Police stopped the bus on its way back to the school's campus, three hours south in Las Cruces.

Peake has not been charged in the shooting. The district attorney in Albuquerqu­e is conducting a separate investigat­ion.

The school's announceme­nt said Friday's move was not related to the shooting and its aftermath.

The board of regents released a separate statement saying it supported “the action taken by the university leaders and is confident a full and thorough investigat­ion will be conducted.”

The Aggies have won seven WAC titles and made eight appearance­s in March Madness since 2007. They are supposed to move into Conference USA next year.

Leadership at the school is also in flux. The board of regents recently decided not to renew the contract of Chancellor Dan Arvizu, which expires in June.

Over the past 14 months, both the school's president and provost have resigned or been removed from their positions.

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