RETURN TO THE COURT
Lobos will open hoops on Sunday in Houston
Sequestered to the Texas Panhandle for more time that they’d care to admit, the University of New Mexico men’s basketball team is set to go full-steam ahead in what promises to be a long and winding path through 202021 college basketball campaign.
The Lobos, who spent the last few days in Albuquerque for final exams, have been in the Texas towns of Lubbock and Levelland since the middle of last month in their quest to evade New Mexico’s coronavirus lockdown. They were back on the road Friday afternoon, boarding a flight to Houston for this weekend’s season opener.
Their return date to New Mexico is open ended.
UNM will play undefeated Rice on Sunday afternoon, then stay in Houston for at least a few more days to play a neutral-site game Tuesday night against Our Lady of the Lake University, an NAIA team in San Antonio, Texas.
Lobos head coach Paul Weir said Rice is allowing the Lobos to use its arena, weight room and practice facility for a week. The school said UNM could use the 5,208-seat Tudor Fieldhouse on Dec. 17 if the Lobos are able to schedule an additional opponent for that night.
After that, it’s off to Idaho for the Dec. 21-23 Mountain West-opening series against Boise State and then, with any luck, a pit stop in New Mexico before heading back out.
“It’s not quite the length of the last trip we had,” Weir said. “But I told them we’re packing till Christmas Eve.”
The Lobos didn’t finalize the details on the Rice game until Thursday night, starting what could be a trend of last-minute scheduling that will dictate the tenor of this most unorthodox season.
Weir said his staff is still trying to hammer out a game against New Mexico State, something they thought they’d done before the Aggies had to shut down their operations in Arizona after a positive test last week.
The wild twists and turns are enough to make a meticulous planner like Weir sprout a few gray hairs. For a player like Lobo newcomer Valdir Manuel, it’s just another day in what has been a wild life.
The 6-foot-10 native of Luanda,
Angola, is one of a dozen new players on this year’s bloated 18-man roster. Unlike most of the other 17, he is completely at ease with unfamiliar surroundings and an unpredictable future.
Manuel said he grew up without a father figure in his life, learning to play basketball from a mother who played at the college level but instantly lost her love of the game when her playing days were over.
He said Friday he moved to the United States when he was 16, attending the Patrick School in New Jersey and spending the last two seasons in junior college at Harcum in Pennsylvania. He broke his arm a year ago, cutting short what had been a truly dominant sophomore season.
In 18 games he averaged 20.6 points and 11.1 rebounds in just 26 minutes per contest. He had recruiters drooling.
“I got here and everybody was basically new … and they welcomed me with open arms,” Manuel said. “They know who I was but we never played together.”
Weir talked about the lack of reliable guidance Manuel got since coming to this country. It started to turn around when he met UNM assistant Dan McHale, who Manuel credits with bringing him to New Mexico.
Over the years Manuel committed (and subsequently decommitted) to multiple Division I programs, including Penn State, Seton Hall and St. John’s. He also had offers from Illinois, Rutgers, Memphis and Rhode Island.
He pulled out of his commitment to Penn State on June 1 and was enrolled at UNM by Aug. 1. On Sunday against Rice, he’ll make his major college debut in cherry and silver.
As nuts as the last few years have been, Manuel admits he’s grown up a little faster and harder than most of his peers.
“It was very hard, and I couldn’t say nothing because I was a kid, and that my parents, nobody, was here,” Manuel said. “So now I’m older and I’m more mature and I know what I want from my life.”
Coach Paul Weir said his staff is still trying to hammer out a game against New Mexico State.
What the Lobos want out of him is the wildly versatile big man he has the potential of becoming. While Manuel said he’s a natural power forward with 3-point range, Weir wants him at center battling for playing time with 6-9 freshman Bayron Matos.
Weir said it’s possible to have both big men on the floor at the same time, but Sunday’s game against Rice is an opportunity for each player to do some damage in the paint and show what having a reliable big man can do for a team that hasn’t gotten a full season out of a true center during Weir’s tenure.
LOBO NOTES
Travel plans: UNM still hasn’t formally announced where it will play its “home” games in the Mountain West. Each conference team will host five two-game series between this month and early March, and earlier this week UNM said it hoped to use Lubbock Christian’s high school-sized arena as its home for those 10 games.
The MWC has yet to approve the proposal. Weir said the Lobos have had some options for an impromptu nonconference schedule. They considered games in Lubbock and Las Vegas, Nev. Weir settled on the two or three games they’ll play in Houston since Rice was willing to open its facilities to them.
“It was just probably too good of a situation for us to turn down,” Weir said.
Roster: The Lobos have 18 players on the roster. Of those, three are walk-ons from New Mexico schools.
There are six international players with Americans hailing from five time zones (assuming, of course, you count the months Arizona spends in the Pacific Time Zone). According to UNM, 15 states and countries are represented, tying for second most of any team in the country.