Aggie coach looks north?
Reports link NMSU coach to UNM job; ex-assistant coached with Alford in Iowa
If sources are to be believed and chatter on social media (wink, wink) wasn’t jumping to unreasonable conclusions, The University of New Mexico’s search for a new men’s basketball coach was a done deal as Monday night came to a close.
No announcement had been made as of late Monday, leaving a whirlwind of speculation driving Lobos fans wild on the internet.
And as for that national search promised by athletic director Paul Krebs? Turns out his target was his proverbial next door neighbor. New Mexico State head coach Paul Weir emerged as the sudden, if not completely unexpected, frontrunner by Monday afternoon after various local and national reports suggested negotiations with other candidates broke down.
Weir’s name first popped up in a message on Twitter by ESPN college basketball writer Jeff Goodman, a tweet that said discussions between UNM and Weir’s camp were ongoing.
Presumed favorite James Borrego, an Albuquerque Academy graduate who now serves as an assistant coach with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, had his name re-emerge as the presumptive pick Monday morning but was quickly ruled out again when various reports suggested he had set a deadline for UNM’s offer.
That unconfirmed deadline came and went, leaving the door open for other candidates like well-circulated names such as Florida Gulf Coast head coach Joe Dooley, UT-Arlington head coach Scott Cross and East Tennessee State head coach Steve Forbes.
All three were apparently out of the running by Monday afternoon, right around the time Weir’s name surfaced.
A native of Canada who once served as an assistant to former Lobos head coach Steve Alford at Iowa, the 37-year-old Weir just completed his 10th season at NMSU. The first nine were as an assistant.
He succeeded Marvin Menzies last year after Menzies took over at UNLV.
Weir led the Aggies to 28 wins and the Western Athletic Conference tournament title this past season, earning the program’s fifth NCAA Tournament berth in six years. The Aggies were eliminated by Baylor in the second round.
Various reports claimed both he and UNM were working on an agreement Monday night, one that would require Weir or UNM to pay a hefty buyout for the remainder of his contract with New Mexico State. Weir’s base salary with the Aggies is $250,000 under a four-year contract that originally took him through the 2019-20 season.
Because the Aggies won the conference tournament in the first two years of Weir’s deal, it gave the school an option for a fifth year that would carry the contract through 2020-21. It is not clear if NMSU has exercised that option.
The terms of his buyout, as reported by the Las Cruces
Sun-News, are 50 percent of the
remaining salary. If NMSU exercises that fifth year, the buyout would be $500,000 — or $125,000 for each year he has left.
UNM is already on the hook for a $1 million buyout, or $500,000 over the next two years, owed to Craig Neal, who was fired as the Lobos’ coach on March 31.
Neal’s base salary at UNM was $300,000 but additional clauses and incentives took it to nearly $1 million annually, making him the highest-paid public employee in the state. The SunNews reported that Weir’s deal included $340,000 in incentives.