Hoops series with Aggies faces trim
The winds of change are upon us, and they’re threatening to topple one of the state’s best sports rivalries.
Well, not really — but things appear to be happening.
The annual home-and-home men’s basketball series between New Mexico and New Mexico State is, at long last, in legitimate danger of becoming a oneand-done affair. Some would argue it’s long overdue.
Looking at you, Richard Pitino. And Paul Weir. And Craig Neal, Steve Alford and just about everyone else who has dealt with the headache of playing a pair of games against an in-state rival when so many options are available elsewhere.
There’s been talk of chopping the annual two-game rivalry in half for years, but now it’s got some serious momentum thanks to the Mountain West Conference, the demand for a tougher NCAA profile and pure common sense. It all serves as ammunition for making the Lobos and Aggies playing once every 12 months an inevitability.
The Mountain West is moving to a 20-game conference schedule next season, up from 18 in years past and 16 a little more than a decade ago. Doing so puts the heavy squeeze on how things work outside the conference.
It eliminates two nonleague games for each of the 11 MWC schools. In truth, it doesn’t have a huge impact on UNM because one of the added games will be at home where it reaps the benefits of five-figure attendance in The Pit.
What it really does is essentially leave UNM with 11 or 12 nonconference games, of which half a dozen need to be played at home to help balance the books. It leaves five or six games for everything else, including the lifeblood for aspiring NCAA Tournament teams — the multi-team events, or MTEs.
These are the weekend tournaments in Las Vegas, Nev.; the Caribbean; Hawaii or anywhere else that has a sleek venue and the allure of attracting teams from around the country to play one, two or three games on a neutral floor and, hopefully, a television audience.
The Lobos played in an MTE last season at the Dollar Loan Center
in Henderson, Nev. They’re scheduled to appear in another one next season in Anaheim, Calif., leaving no more than three available dates. One of those is already gone with a November trip to New York City to play St. John’s in Madison Square Garden.
A third could go to a neutral-site game against another opponent, something the Lobos did last season when they returned to the Dollar Loan Center for a one-off appearance against Santa Clara.
So how would it work? If the Lobos and Aggies play just once, who gets it? Simple.
Whoever gets the annual football game must go on the road for hoops, otherwise it would create a financial windfall every other year for the host school and a veritable desert wasteland for the visitor.
NMSU is home for next season’s football game, hosting the Lobos in Aggie Memorial Stadium on Sept. 28. The basketball one-off would then be in Albuquerque, presumably in November or December.
Neither school will announce its 2024-25 schedule for a while; last year UNM didn’t finalize its slate until the fall. There’s no guarantee the Rio Grande Rivalry will drop to a single game right away, but the writing is on the wall for a pair of programs that are increasingly at the mercy of expanding conference schedules and the growing need to play quality competition at neutral sites in nonleague events.
There are undoubtedly those who would love to see the two-round battle continue, but the modern movement of scheduling trends is making the idea of home-and-home agreements obsolete.