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Men’s 09 Starting line

The 2009-10 UNM men’s basketball team’s season will be much like an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” for head coach Steve Alford.

Super sleuth Alford will have to figure out one looming question: How can the Lobos repeat their performance from a year ago?

The Lobos, who are picked to finish fifth in the Mountain West Conference, have only one senior leader, Roman Martinez.

For Martinez, it’s a heavy burden, Alford said.

“He has so many questions that the (young) guys ask him every day,” he said. “Well, that’s better than them not asking questions.”

The Lobos are full of youthful inexperience, but there are some positives to having a young core, Alford said.

“Our strength is our backcourt,” he said. “But we’re loaded with very good guards, and we have got to make use of that. I think our frontcourt people have improved, and they have gotten better. We’re very young, we have nine guys that are freshmen and sophomores. We’re going to have to learn things on the run.”

In his first two years directing the Lobo men’s basketball team, Alford has brought glory, tradition and soul back to the program, especially after two subpar periods during the tenure of former head coaches Fran Fraschilla and Ritchie McKay in the early part of the decade.

But Alford has exceeded all expectations in his short time at UNM.

He has had two 20-plus win seasons and was the 2009 Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year. Not to mention, he brought hardware back to the Land of Enchantment, helping the Lobos garner a share of the MWC regular-season championship last season.
He restored the fear in opponents playing in The Pit. The Lobos were 16-2 overall and a perfect 8-0 against the Mountain West Conference at home last year.

The Lobos nonconference schedule is tougher than last year’s. UNM hosts preseason No. 13 California on Dec. 2. and No. 22. Dayton on New Year’s Day.

“The nonconference schedule that we have (this year) will definitely test us,” Alford said.

The Lobos have a neutral-site duel with Big 12 opponent Texas A&M slated for Dec. 12, in Houston at the Toyota Center.

UNM will also be without senior leadership from swingman Tony Danridge, center Daniel Faris and guard Chad Toppert. Assistant head coach Craig Neal said they’ll definitely be missed.

“I think we were the only team (last season) in the conference that played four freshmen a lot of minutes,” Neal said. “Our expectations are a little bit although they’re high we realize we have nine freshmen and sophomores. The biggest thing we have to work on is winning every game we can, work hard and just see what happens.”
The Lobos will see what happens when they open up the regular season on Saturday with Big West opponent, University of California-Riverside.

Junior guard Dairese Gary said he is excited to hit the floor for the first meaningful game of the year.

“We have been working hard for a long time now,” Gary said. “We have been looking forward to this first game and the season getting started. Some of the young people, you know, this is their first game.”

During his time as head coach of Iowa, Alford coached against UCR head coach Jim Wooldridge. Wooldridge was in charge of Kansas State, Alford said.

“Very well coached team,” Alford said. “They seem athletic, and they look like they really want to push the basketball. It looks like a team that is sound fundamentally defensively, and they have an awful lot of weapons with guys who can shoot the basketball.”

*Men’s basketball vs. UC Riverside
Saturday
7 p.m.
The Pit*

*
Women’s 09 Starting line*

Just what exactly is women’s basketball head coach Don Flanagan’s secret?

The Lobos, over the course of head coach Flanagan’s tenure, have consistently over-achieved when they were expected to flop.

Why?

Amy Beggin, the Lobos’ preseason All-American point guard, took a crack at answering the question.

“I think of just what a great teacher (Flanagan) is,” she said. “We try not to listen to all the outside things that are going on.”

It comes as no surprise that this year the UNM women’s basketball team is slotted to finish fourth in the Mountain West Conference preseason poll, just like last year.
Balderdash, Flanagan said.

“I think that they have a lower estimation of us,” Flanagan said. “I always think we’re going to be the best team in the conference. I’m not getting a complex over it.

Yes, the conference estimations last year were spot on, though they weren’t a good indicator of which teams had the best shot to win the conference tournament. Explain, you say?

Simply put, UNM is always a contender come March. Flanagan’s Lobos have won five MWC Tournament championships.

MWC preseason polls are especially meaningless to the Lobos.

Only one time, during the 2006-07 season, were the Lobos tabbed to finish first, but that’s when UNM had enlisted forward Dionne Marsh. Two other times, prognosticators put the Lobos finishing second. All other times the Lobos were picked to finish third or worse.

But, as last year proved, educated guesses, as educated as they might be, are just that — guesses. And as UNM has proven day-in and day-out, it’s a threat to all conference foes, regardless of preseason polls.

Enter last year’s improbable run.

Picked to finish fourth, many discounted the Lobos. Flanangan, at the conference tournament in Las Vegas last year, said pundits said that it was a “three-pony race.”
Wrong again.

Truth of the matter is UNM was one point short of earning an automatic bid. If it wasn’t for Utah’s Morgan Warburton’s last-second heroics in the final of the MWC Tournament, the Lobos would’ve gone to the tournament — and quite possibly, given how they performed in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament, won a game.
Not surprisingly, Flanagan doesn’t miss Warburton.

“I’m happy,” he said. “I hope she’s having fun (playing) in Europe somewhere. She was a player that comes around once every 10 years. Not only was she good, she was good in the clutch.”

Thus, taking into consideration all the facts about how the Lobos’ squad last year was in a rebuilding phase, who, in their right mind, would discount UNM?

Honestly, it would be illogical to bet against Flanagan’s Lobos this year, especially now that UNM won’t have to lean solely on Beggin, Bill Withers style.

“Last year, I had to go to Amy more than I really wanted to,” Flanagan said. “I think this year with Sara Halasz’s development, with Amanda Best’s development, Lauren Taylor’s development — all of those players will help us a whole bunch.”

Nope, UNM will have a new identity this season; the Lobos just don’t know which identity they’ll take.

“I don’t know if we really have one yet,” Beggin said. “It might develop, but we’re definitely versatile and a lot quicker than we were in past years. So, maybe it’s going to be transition style. Maybe it’s clamping down and shutting teams down on defense.”
At the very least, Beggin won’t have to make such a concerted effort to be a playmaker for the Lobos, Flanagan said.

That, Beggin said, is a relief, since during the conference portion of the season last year, she forced the issue at times — even when plays weren’t materializing.

“I was just trying to make a play, especially at the end of games,” she said. “It didn’t work out, especially in conference. We lost a lot of close games. But I think overall our team is ready to get over that hump and ready to start winning games again.”

If that’s the equivalent of it not working out — being one game out of the NCAA Tournament — just what can fans expect Flanagan and the crew will pull out this year?
All he would say is: “It’s a new year.”

But much of the same old, same old from the MWC.