For four seniors, Saturday was the last game they would play at The Pit. Amy Beggin, Jessica Kielpinski, Valerie Kast and Georonika Jackson finished the afternoon the same way they started — with a 16-3 run.
Teeming with pride, the UNM baseball team was still, apparently, making a Texas toast to themselves. Briefly, the Lobos dawdled with Northern Colorado, a team they beat handily last season by a combined three-game score of 46-9.
Last season, the UNM men’s basketball team captured a share of the Mountain West Conference championship with a win in its final game of the season. Saturday, the Lobos sealed that title a game earlier, with an 83-81 win against BYU in Provo, Utah.
It’s home sweet home for the UNM baseball team. The Lobos (2-1), ranked No. 19 in the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, have their home opener today, a four-series against Northern Colorado at Isotopes Park. Northern Colorado will play its first games of the season.
The Mountain West Conference caucuses are over. The time for teams to put in their applications for first-place candidacy has come and gone.
Trudgingly, the UNM women’s basketball team trekked to a 65-50 victory over downtrodden Colorado State. For the greater part of 30 minutes, the Lobos (16-10, 8-6 Mountain West Conference) slogged toward the finish line — but they did finish, stringing together enough effort in a concentrated four-minute period to open the second half, in which Eileen Weissmann had four points, one coming off a 3-pointer.
Perhaps nobody in the state of New Mexico is aware that Ray Birmingham is actually a seer. When the Lobo head coach scheduled Texas, he seemed to be aiming for impossible targets without all his bullets — the Lobos lost several seniors from last year’s team, and this year, as it seems every year, was coined a rebuilding year by pundits, Birmingham said. Let this serve as a notice. The UNM baseball team marched into No.
A normal collegiate track athlete might compete in up to four events. When Lobo track and field athlete Richard York steps onto the curved slopes of an indoor track, he competes in seven.
And to think, the UNM men’s basketball was on the verge of blowing its 10-game win streak, No. 12 national ranking, the Mountain West lead and, potentially, the regular-season championship. With three minutes left, the Lobos were down three to Air Force (9-16 overall and 1-11 MWC), the worst team in the MWC. But in what is fast becoming a signature, the Lobos survived, coming out with a 59-56 win inside The Pit on Saturday off of Darington Hobson’s game-winning layup with 16 seconds left in the game. Including Saturday’s win, the Lobos (25-3, 11-2 MWC) have won three of the last five games decided by less than four points and won all eight games this season decided by four or less points. “For whatever reason, if you look at those last four-minute games, we have won a lot,” said head coach Steve Alford.
It couldn’t have been a better home-opening weekend for the UNM softball team. The Lobos nearly swept Seattle, winning three of four games over the weekend at the UNM Softball Complex.
The UNM women’s tennis team was blanked by Kansas State on Sunday at UNM’s Linda Estes Tennis Center. The Lobos failed to win a match in the 7-0 loss, but head coach Roy Cañada said the match was closer than the score indicated. “It was actually a very close match,” he said.
Head UNM baseball coach Ray Birmingham said he will chew the ears off the competition on the field. And in interviews, he will talk the ears off reporters about two things — New Mexico and baseball. “I have been coaching a long time in this state, the greatest state in the union,” Birmingham said.
Behind a pitching screen, 30 feet from the plate, Lobo head coach Ray Birmingham stands protected — a Kmart basket full of baseballs, all from different walks of thread. There’s the “old and beat up” ones that “run in on your hands,” said outfielder Ryan Honeycutt, the ones that “tail away from you” and the ones that “go even faster.” And now, Honeycutt is next to step into the cage, next to be victimized. There he is — straddling the left side of the plate, knees slightly bent, hands faintly choked up on the handle of the bat, the alternating zip of the ball leaving the machine, the echoic “ping” of the baseball as Honeycutt makes contact and the ever-occasional thump of a ball hitting the backstop. The latter sound, that solid wallop, signifies it’s time to take a seat on the pine.
“Whenever and wherever” seems to be UNM head baseball coach Ray Birmingham’s unofficial motto. Anytime, anyplace, Birmingham said he and his boys will play the best teams that college baseball has to offer. “I am proud to be a New Mexican, and I am going to go to Texas and tell them,” Birmingham said.
Heath Schroyer was dressed appropriately for the occasion. The Wyoming head coach suited up in all black for the Cowboys’ burial in the depths of The Pit on Wednesday, as the UNM men’s basketball team blitzed to an 83-61 win. The only thing that was remotely in doubt — other than another UNM win — was if Lobo fans would get their reduced-price tacos from Taco Bell on Thursday (the fast-food restaurant hands out cheap tacos if the Lobos score 65 points or more) — that is until UNM guard Jamal Fenton drained three free throws with 9:49 to go in the game, giving UNM a 67-37 advantage.
From reading the tea leaves of the last five games, the UNM women’s basketball team (14-9, 6-5 MWC) should walk away from Wyoming with a win. Over the last five games, at home, the Lobos have lost to teams with worse records than them — with the exception of a win over TCU — and beat teams on the road which were ranked above or equal to them in the Mountain West Conference.
If there are any rules of chemistry in the sporting world, especially in the realm of college athletics, it’s that winning with a young team is nearly impossible. But head coach Steve Alford’s Lobos are the exception to the rule in the college basketball table of elements. The Lobos, 12th in the Associated Press poll and 15th in ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ poll, are 23-3 overall and 9-2 in the Mountain West Conference and are looking for their 10th straight conference win.
It was the tale of two teams on Valentine’s Day at the UNM Tennis Complex. Just like the literary classics, there was love, loss and drama on court Sunday for the UNM men’s and women’s tennis teams. While the No.
Somewhere buried in the bowels of cognition, there is a reason the UNM women’s basketball team can’t, for the life of them, beat Utah. Since the sport is amicable to ambiguity, it takes a locksmith to unlock the adjoining corridors of brain, behavior and basketball, an area that is neither strictly qualitative nor quantitative, though box scores attempt to crystallize the narratives of games through basic statistical lenses.
It was supposed to be a game of redemption for the UNM women’s basketball team. And it was going to be the defense that would provide a spark to put the Lobos back on track toward contending for the Mountain West Conference regular-season championship. But Utah derailed the Lobos in The Pit on Saturday with a 52-49 victory, UNM’s fourth straight loss to the Utes on Bob King Court and its second straight loss after reeling off three wins in a row against conference top dogs BYU, TCU and San Diego State. Although the Lobos played a near-perfect defensive game, it was a lack of offensive production that sealed the Lobos’ tomb. Head coach Don Flanagan said he doesn’t understand why his team can’t drain shots, especially open shots.
Solutions by The State News
