With a myriad of guards and height in the frontcourt, the UNM men's basketball team will field its best team under third year head coach Fran Fraschilla.
The Lobos have five versatile scoring machines and young, talented post players that will be looking to get UNM to a place it has been accustomed to visiting - the NCAA Tournament.
"We feel good about the program and where it is heading," Fraschilla said. "We feel good about the quality of young people we have in our program. We are better than we were the first two years, on paper, but we have to play like that."
Fraschilla is optimistic because he has quite possibly some of the best perimeter players in the nation.
Juniors Marlon Parmer and Ruben Douglas, seniors Tim Lightfoot and Eric Chatfield and junior transfer Senque Carey are guards who will be called upon to carry the scoring load for the Lobos.
"We are versatile because each of them has different strengths," Fraschilla said.
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"They all can score, but they can score in different ways. Tim Lightfoot is an outside shooter. Marlon is more of a penetrator. Ruben has a good long and midrange game. Eric gets to the basket and Q (Carey) hits the open shot. So all of them bring different strengths to our backcourt."
And Fraschilla said each of them has improved from last season.
The super quick Parmer led the Mountain West Conference in assists last season with 5.4 per game, to go along with 11.6 points per game.
Chatfield is the team's defensive stopper and averaged 12.9 points per game.
Probably the team's most explosive scorer is Douglas, who led the team in scoring at 16.3 per game and was a second team all-conference selection.
Lightfoot, known as T-Light to his teammates, provides instant offense off the bench for the Lobos, while Carey becomes eligible after sitting out last year after transferring from the University of Washington.
With the team loaded in the backcourt, the uncertainty for this year's team is the frontcourt.
"We have a lot of talent in the frontcourt, much more than my first two years, but it is inexperienced talent," Fraschilla said. "We have to make sure our frontcourt grows up quick."
The inside players include two junior college transfers, two freshmen and a sophomore.
The Lobos only experienced big man is sophomore Patrick Dennehy, although he averaged only 12.6 minutes per game last season. He will be joined in the paint by junior Cody Payne, a transfer from Collin County Community College in Texas, who has a reputation as a physical player. Freshman forward Jamaal Williams has been rated in several publications as one of the top-75 incoming freshman in the nation. But what has most Lobo fans excited are the new twin towers who will be roaming the paint. UNM finally has height with 6-feet-11-inch freshman Chad Bell from Westchester High School in California and 7-foot post Moustapha Diagne, a transfer from Trinity Valley Community College in Texas.
They will be looking to give UNM an inside game it has been missing for several years. And the big men know what they're role is.
"The more we can box out, rebound, block shots the better our team is going to be and that is what we are going to try and do," Dennehy said. "We are trying to get a lot of touches inside to open things up so our guards will have those gaps to drive and get open shots. It's going to improve our team all around. That's all we are trying to do, be a factor inside; help our guards out as much as we can because we know last year we lacked that."
Something else the team lacked last year was depth, which Fraschilla said will be no problem this year as long as players play up to their potential.
"We are going to be able to go nine or 10 deep," Fraschilla said. "We need contributions in a variety of different ways from a lot of different people to be successful. Some people are scorers, some people are rebounders and some are defenders. We need contributions from everybody."
With so many new faces and an abundance of talent, Douglas said the key to the season is the team meshing.
"We all have to come together; everybody has to know their roles," Douglas said. "They have to know what they are out there for. Once everybody knows their roles, knows each other's game and knows the plays, that is when it will all come together."
What should help UNM make the transition a little easier is plenty of home games early. The Lobos play 15 of their first 17 games, all non-conference, at home.
But Fraschilla said no matter how many home games the team has, they will still have to earn every victory.
"We need to play hard, play as a team and play unselfishly," Fraschilla said. "If we stick to those things, we have a chance to be very good."
