Sports Briefs Track and Field New Mexico will send four athletes to the NCAA Championships after they qualified for the meet at the 2015 NCAA West Preliminary in Austin, Texas this past weekend. Peter Callahan, Logan Pflibsen, Callie Thackery and Alice Wright will represent the Lobos at the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon this month.
The UNM men’s soccer team debuted a new player this spring, and his name is Yuri Domiciano. Domiciano, a 6-foot defender from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is one of the six members of the 2015 recruiting class announced by the UNM men’s soccer program earlier this year. He arrived to the United States in 2012 and spent two years at Iowa Western, a junior college. In 2014 he was named a Junior College All-American and helped his team advance to the national semifinals by holding opponents to just .45 goals per game.
Former New Mexico guard Hugh Greenwood will represent Australia in the 2015 World University Games in South Korea this summer, the Australian team announced Wednesday. The Boomers are in Pool C with Lithuania, Finland, Japan, France and Chinese Taipei, and will begin play on July 3.
New Mexico’s streak of Mountain West championships came to an end Sunday. The Lobos had won either the MW regular season or tournament title the past four seasons, but that run ended with a 6-4 loss to San Diego State in the title game of the MW tournament in Reno, Nevada. UNM, which finished fourth in the regular season, lost a chance to win the MW tournament title when the Lobos were blown out by the second-seeded Aztecs 11-1. SDSU has now won the last three MW tourney championships.
An epic collapse changed the entire season for the New Mexico men’s golf team. In March, the Lobos blew a 12-stroke lead in the final round of the San Diego Classic and finished in third place. After the tournament, UNM had a team meeting and decided to change its approach.
The New Mexico women’s tennis team did not need to wait to see if it would make the NCAA tournament after taking the Mountain West Championships in a 4-1 victory over Nevada on Sunday. The Lobos will be taking on LSU after the team won their first ever Mountain West tournament title.
Garnering close wins is something New Mexico has attributed to being a young ball club. UNM is just 7-13 in games decided by two runs or less. Head coach Ray Birmingham said losing in close contests is not something that can be credited to a single problem.
When the Mountain West Men’s Tennis Championship comes around, Boise State plays at a different level. Despite winning the regular-season title, New Mexico faltered against the Broncos 4-1 on Saturday afternoon in the conference tourney semifinals. Boise State went on to win the Mountain West title with a 4-3 victory over Nevada on Sunday. The Broncos have now won the Mountain West tournament for four straight seasons. “We knew the danger; we know how good Boise is,” Lobo head coach Bart Scott said on Saturday. “We know they turn it on in the conference tournament and we were prepared for it. We just didn’t play our best, and Boise had something to do with that.”
Sports Briefs Baseball Close losses have haunted the UNM baseball team this season, and this past weekend was no different. The Lobos were swept by Wichita State and two of those losses were by just one-run.
New Mexico volleyball has its sights on the NCAA tournament this season. After releasing the 2015 schedule on Friday, head coach Jeff Nelson said he devised the schedule with the vision of a playoff run, without needing to win the conference. “It’s always the goal to win the conference,” Nelson said. “But scheduling like this, it gives us an opportunity to get a second or third (place) team into the postseason, if we can do well.”
The UNM women’s tennis team made school history on Sunday by winning its first Mountain West Championship. The Lobos claimed the 2015 title tournament after defeating the Wyoming Cowgirls, though the road to the top was far from smooth. The team had to overcome poor weather conditions, match delays and a few trips to the doctor. But those obstacles were not enough to stop them.
Chris Harriman isn’t new to New Mexico and its men’s basketball program. In 2011, Harriman came to The Pit and got his first taste of UNM as a member of the Saint Louis coaching staff.
A dominating performance against Air Force fueled New Mexico to the Mountain West Men’s Tennis Championship semifinals. Not much went wrong for UNM in Thursday night’s first round at the McKinnon Family Tennis Stadium. The No. 1 seeded Lobos did not lose a single set to the No. 8 Falcons.
New Mexico men’s basketball coach Craig Neal announced on Wednesday that forward Jordan Goodman will transfer from the program to be closer to his hometown of Temple Hills, Maryland. Neal said Goodman told him that he wanted to transfer during the team’s end-of-season meeting. “We talked to him about it. He’s concerned about the health of his dad and it just didn’t work out here,” Neal said. “It’s his decision and he’s going to transfer. I’ve given him his release and we wish him the best. It just didn’t work out.”
After earning its first regular season title since 2008, the UNM men’s tennis team is still not satisfied. The No. 41 Lobos (19-9, 6-1) earned the top seed in the Mountain West men’s bracket after a 4-0 victory over the Air Force Falcons last Saturday. This was no small accomplishment, but UNM head coach Bart Scott says his team has a lot more to offer. “We are not satisfied. We are still very hungry,” he said.
Do college athletes deserve a paycheck? The debate over whether or not amateurism includes the collegiate sports realm has been a burning topic of discussion for the past couple of years. National broadcasting companies and advertisers can generate more than $1 million in revenue for major sporting events in a wide range of sports. Chris Smith wrote in Forbes magazine that CBS and Turner Warner make upwards of $1 billion on the March Madness games. For the Final Four, Smith wrote that advertisers were paying more than $700,000 for 30-second advertising slots during the two games. Collegiate players do not reap any of the financial benefits that schools, advertisers and broadcasting companies make from the big games.
All New Mexico golfer Gavin Green needed was a confidence boost. After a freshman campaign in which his best finish was ninth place, Green knew he still had plenty of room to grow to compete with some of the best amateur golfers in America. “Before I even came here, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t even know if I can win a college event,’” he said. “My first college event I shot even par and I tied 20th. Back home, you shoot even par you’re top 10, top 5. It’s just a different ball game here, I feel like.”
Youth and inexperience have New Mexico’s baseball team focusing internally rather than on competitors. Head coach Ray Birmingham said his team has been improving and must continue to grow from within rather than worry about the upcoming series tonight against the UNLV Rebels. “We’re trying to play the game right. If we can get everyone to play the game right, then we should take off,” he said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the teams that we’re facing, it has to do with us.”
It took senior tight end Reece White longer than most to find the right position. White came to UNM as a walk-on wide receiver in 2012, but didn’t have the speed to play wide out at the Division I level. The coaches moved White to safety, but he never actually took any reps at the position because the team still needed him at wide receiver for the scout team. “I came in a wide receiver and didn’t really fit well,” White said. “I did some scout wide receiver kind of stuff, so they moved me to safety for a short period of time. I wasn’t quite as fast as everybody else.”
By Thomas Romero-Salas The importance of running track and field became clear to Carlos Wiggins after last year. The New Mexico wide receiver combined to run only two races last indoor and outdoor track season and paid for it during football.
Solutions by The State News
