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Many UNM coaches are embracing the same philosophy: in order to be the best, you have to play against the best.
Men’s soccer head coach Jeremy Fishbein, men’s golf head coach Glen Millican and head baseball coach Ray Birmingham continue to schedule tough opponents in the hopes that it will bring them championships.
Next year, the men’s soccer team will play seven teams that made last year’s NCAA tournament. Fishbein said a tough schedule will help the team advance further in the tournament. The team went undefeated last year and was ranked as high as No. 1 in the nation, but fell short to the University of South Florida in overtime during the third round of the NCAA tournament.
“The goal of our department and of the individual teams is to compete for national championships, and the only way to compete at that level is to play the best competition,” Fishbein said.
“That’s who our guys want to play against, and that’s how we feel we can get better, and we’ve been fortunate to be very aggressive with our schedule.”
Millican, who led the men’s golf team to a No. 16 national ranking at the end of the season, said for a golf team to be successful, you have to play against the best players as well as play on the toughest courses.
“We try to play all the best tournaments we can and all the best golf courses we can, and those two things give us an opportunity to play against the best teams in the country,” Millican said. “We play the best courses we can because they’re going to prepare you for what we hope to see in the NCAA tournament, and we try to have the best schedule we can, so our players can have a chance to go against the best players in the country.”
The baseball team won both the MWC regular-season and tournament titles and received an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
Birmingham said UNM Athletics is starting to become known nationwide in multiple sports.
“The Lobos are coming your way,” Birmingham said. “You better batten down the hatches, because we’re going to get you.”
Millican said scheduling is important to having a successful team, but so is recruiting.
“Recruiting is number one,” Millican said. “You have to recruit good players if you want to have a good team.”
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With the baseball team’s success, Birmingham said it will be easier to recruit the nation’s top players.
“We’ll go into a kid’s house and tell them we’re just as good as LSU or Arkansas,” Birmingham said. “They know that if you go to UNM, you have a chance to be a high draft pick and a good chance to go to Omaha.”
