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Lobo fan and student Mattia Chase sought to give a voice to the students who wanted to hire Craig Neal as the new Lobo men’s basketball head coach.
Former head coach Steve Alford announced Saturday his plans to leave the UNM men’s basketball program to coach UCLA. Mattia said her mission began when she made a handful of “UNM: Hire Noodles” T-shirts and handed them out to her sorority sisters in Kappa Kappa Gamma. Neal is nicknamed “Noodles” because of the lanky build he had during his playing days in high school and at his alma mater Georgia Tech. After making the shirts, Mattia and her older brother Chris Chase created the “UNM Hire Coach Noodles” Facebook page.
“We decided to make the Facebook page because we wanted to see how the community would react to the idea of having Neal as our coach and a chance for (Athletics Director Paul) Krebs to see that,” Mattia Chase said.
After creating the Facebook page Sunday night, Mattia said she awoke to more than 600 “likes” for the page. The fan page had 4,388 “likes” as of press time.
Mattia’s mission took off from there, and the hashtag #HireCraigNeal gained popularity on Twitter. On Monday, Neal and members of the men’s basketball team showed up to the Kappa Kappa Gamma house, each wearing a “UNM: Hire Noodles” T-shirt.
Though Mattia had only met Neal once before, she said Neal’s work as an assistant coach has received the attention of students throughout the University.
“I think that we grew together as a school, watching our basketball players getting as far as they did, and we don’t want to see that descend. I think it helps for UNM to come together and form a team, in its own way,” Mattia Chase said.
