Balling till he's falling
by Riley Bauling
Daily Lobo
1) Jeff Rowland - Count 'em: Only four other UNM men's soccer players have made an All-American team. And if Rowland really wants to play for bragging rights, there has only been one other Lobo - Edmundo Rodriguez in 1992 - to make the first team.
Oh yeah, there's also that part about Rowland topping Rodriguez's 12-year record for most points in a season with his 19 goals and seven assists in 2004.
Rodriguez might retort with his 1992 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation MVP award, but Rowland would have that argument covered because he got his co-MPSF Player of the Year award last season.
Of course, Rowland might be remiss without mentioning that his team was ranked No. 1 in the country to end the season and made it further in the NCAA tournament - it fell in the third round - than any other UNM men's soccer team in history.
Not bad for someone who had to beg head coach Jeremy Fishbein to let him on the team in the first place.
2) Mandi Moore - When you are the all-time assist leader for your school, you should probably get a special pair of isotoners to protect your precious hands. Do those isotoners come diamond-encrusted when you are the all-time assist leader in your conference and second on your team in rebounding your senior season as a 5-foot-7-inch guard?
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Some of the fans at Senior Night wept with Moore, thinking her days in The Pit were long gone.
Turn those frowns upside down: Head coach Don Flanagan said he plans to have her as a graduate assistant next year.
3) Nick Speegle - The dude had a 3.97 grade point average and only one B as an undergraduate. He played in the Lobos' bowl game against Navy five weeks after separating his shoulder and played the whole second half against Wyoming on Nov. 20 with it separated.
He was a first-team All-Mountain West Conference selection. And head coach Rocky Long said he performed as well as or better in the 40-yard dash, the vertical leap, the bench press and the long jump than any other NFL prospect in the country. In the country. Let that sink in a little.
If Long's appraisal of Speegle is any indication, the outside linebacker should be turning some heads in the stands and on the field for the Cleveland Browns come next season.
4) Spencer Levin - When you hear about college athletes going pro early, you instantly think of basketball players. Levin might put that notion to shame pretty quickly.
Ranked as the No. 1 amateur golfer in the country at the beginning of this season and the fall, Levin said he's flirting with turning pro after this year. In case you haven't heard, he's a junior right now.
His arch-nemesis - Ryan Moore of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas - is the only other player to have been ranked ahead of Levin this season. Mark your calendars: The two face off in the U.S. Open on June 16.
5) Kailin Downs - Long gone are the days of Bo Jackson and talented dual-sport athletes.
Cue left: Downs.
The senior finishes up her senior golf season this year and will promptly pick up a volleyball and a jersey for the UNM volleyball team.
As a golfer, she's a two-time All-American - once as an honorable mention and once as a second-team player. She was the first-ever player to be named to the All-MWC team four years in a row, and she's aiming to break the all-time career scoring record at UNM. With two possible tournaments left, she's more than a stroke below the mark.
Furious P
by Phil Parker
Daily Lobo
1) Danny Granger - The man. Anyone who attended a late-season home game felt the effect this 6-foot-8-inch guard-forward had on The Pit.
Lobo hoops was back this year, and no team at UNM was quite as exciting as men's basketball.
Granger led the team in rebounds and points, flashing insane bursts of versatility with equal doses of fadeaways, post-ups and 3-pointers.
But he brought the thunder on defense. His blocks were nasty exclamation points that fired up Lobo fans as much as any dunks. And no opposing player's errant pass was safe - he finished second in the conference in steals.
Andrew Bogut may have reaped the rewards of ceaseless hype in being named conference and national player of the year, but Granger outplayed him in each of their last two games together. Both were Lobo wins, the last for the MWC championship.
Whatever pro team is smart enough to pick him up in June's NBA draft will immediately become a favorite for all Lobo fans.
2) Becca Barras- - Cloaked by the relative obscurity of her sport, Barras nonetheless spent this year brilliantly capping her diving career at UNM.
She won two gold medals and one silver at the MWC championships.She is the first female All-American diver to come out of UNM's program. In her final competition as a Lobo at the National Championships, she won 15th in the one-meter springboard and took 23rd on the platform.
But my favorite statistic is the astounding 16 MWC diver of the week awards she garnered over her career here. She was the queen of Mountain West Diving this year, at one point earning the diver of the week award four straight times.
3) Spencer Levin -- What else do you need to know? As a tune-up for this year, Levin finished 13th in the U.S. Open. That put him ahead of Sergio Garcia, Vijay Singh and some loser named Tiger Woods. He even hit a hole in one there - at the 17th hole on the first day of competition.
He wasn't too bad once he joined his Lobo teammates either. Levin was a preseason first-team All-American and has lived up to that title. He won three of this year's tournaments outright and led the team to its third straight MWC title.
4) Matt Gonzales - It was impossible to follow this year's cross country or track teams and not take notice of Gonzales' crazy seasons.
He remained one of UNM's most dominant athletes in his senior year. An All-American in both sports, he bookended his year on one end with a stint in the U.S. Olympic trials over the summer and on the other with the NCAA Championship Track and Field Meet, which will take place in Sacramento in June.
In March, he missed winning the national championship in the 5,000 meters by just 2.36 seconds.
5) Dionne Marsh - The freshman sensation was money all season, shooting with either hand from anywhere inside the 3-point line and hitting at a clip of 49 percent.
On a team led by veterans Mandi Moore and Lindsay Arndt, Marsh was the most productive player on the court. She led the team in scoring with 13 per game and was second in rebounding at just over five.
She was also psychotic about getting to the free-throw line. Her 193 foul shots were 127 more than the next closest teammate.
And Marsh was more poised than any freshman has a right to be. Consider her brilliant performance during the Lobos' championship run through the Mountain West Conference tournament - the one that earned her MVP honors.
