After a 4-1 Conference USA win over Florida International University on Friday, the No. 23 New Mexico men’s soccer team is taking a break from conference play Tuesday to host the Loyola Marymount University Lions. But conference match or not, head coach Jeremy Fishbein said the Lobos won’t be taking this one lightly.
After opening up conference play with a win, New Mexico has stumbled its past three matches and finds itself towards the bottom of the standings early in Mountain West play. Fresno State (10-5, 1-3 MW) needed just three sets to send UNM home and back to the drawing board after a 3-0 sweep on Saturday afternoon. “I just think it’s gut-check time,” head coach Jeff Nelson said in a release. “We were 10-4 and now we’re 10-7.”
The New Mexico women’s tennis team will send pair of Lobos to the ITA All-American Championships. The team is still not at full strength — Andrea Leblanc has successfully rehabbed from an injury that kept her out of action last week, but Emily Olivier will likely miss this weekend due to illness.
Although the season opener is still a month away, New Mexico head coach Craig Neal is already evaluating what the Lobos can do to have a successful season. During a press conference before UNM’s first official practice on Friday, Neal said the staff and players are working hard to get back to the same level they were at not too long ago. To Neal, and much of the Lobo fanbase, the past two seasons didn’t meet the program’s expectations.
New Mexico blew an early 21 point first-half lead in its last game against Rutgers. On Saturday, another 21 point lead was evaporating quickly, and Lobo fans had to buckle up for a bumpy ride. UNM’s defense tightened up in the second half as it has all season, allowing only 28 yards and zero points in the quarter. An interception returned for a touchdown by Austin Ocasio put the Lobos up 41-20, and the game seemed to be well in hand.
It was by no means perfect, but the UNM football team held on to win its first Mountain West game of the season 48-41 against the San José State Spartans. With the win, New Mexico improved to 2-2 (1-0 MW) and 2-0 at home.
Head coach Heather Dyche said she was looking for leadership from UNM’s offense. She got more than one leader in Friday afternoon’s 3-1 victory over San Jose State. Dyche has said she thought her squad was too timid in the final third of the soccer field and said someone had to take control in the Lobo attack.
The defending champions No. 2-ranked New Mexico women’s cross country team placed fourth among 23 teams, while the youthful men’s squad placed 23rd of 25 on Friday afternoon in Notre Dame, Indiana. Although the women’s team couldn’t accomplish a three-peat — having won the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invite in 2014 and 2015 — it remained competitive with solid top-five performances from Alice Wright (second place) and Calli Thackery (fifth), with times of 16:16.0 and 16:30.9, respectively, in the 5-kilometer race.
The New Mexico men’s tennis team hits the courts Friday to open the fall season, but its nationally-ranked doubles team will first head to Tulsa, Oklahoma to compete in the ITA All-American Championships. New head coach Ben Dunbar said he will accompany Hayden Sabatka and Bart Van Leijsen to compete in the tournament. Sabataka and Van Leijsen are the No. 15 doubles pairing in the nation, according to the ITA preseason rankings.
The UNM men’s soccer team got its first Conference USA win of the season on Friday night in a 4-1 victory over Florida International University. Head coach Jeremy Fishbein said the 1-0 loss to Kentucky on Sunday helped motivate his team to play their best against FIU (3-5-1, 1-2 C-USA). “It was a great performance tonight,” Fishbein said.
With autumn in the air, there is one big thing that comes into the minds of New Mexico sports fans: college basketball. The UNM men’s basketball team stepped back on the court on Friday afternoon for its first official practice. The Lobos finished the 2015-2016 season with a 17-15 overall record and went 10-8 in the Mountain West Conference, good for a fourth place finish.
After a quick start, the Lobos couldn’t finish the job in a 3-2 loss to San Jose State in San Jose, California on Thursday night. It appeared things were going smoothly for New Mexico (10-6, 1-2 MW), who started the first Mountain West road match of the season with 25-21 and 26-24 wins in the first two sets. However, after intermission, the Lobos ran out of steam, and UNM dropped the next three sets.
After dropping its first two Mountain West openers at home, New Mexico Women’s Soccer is in dire need of a leader. Head coach Heather Dyche said she hopes to see someone take charge in the attacking third of the field, an area the Lobos desperately need work in.
After a disappointing result last weekend, the UNM men’s soccer team is looking to get back on the winning track. The Lobos (5-3, 0-1 C-USA) fell 1-0 to the Kentucky Wildcats last Sunday during their Conference USA opening match. The statistics showed New Mexico edging Kentucky 12-6 in shots and 8-3 in corner kicks, but in the end it was only the Wildcats who got on the scoreboard.
New Mexico head coach Bob Davie said the young season has seemed to have had a lot of starts and stops, but things are about to ratchet up with nine straight weeks of football on the slate. The Lobos have put in a lot of practice for three games that were unconventionally spaced out from each other. The season opener was on Sept. 1, but the team has played only two games since after to last week’s bye.
With two starters on the New Mexico bench, the Lobos will look to steal a couple victories on the team’s trip to California. UNM is coming off a split in its first two conference home games of the year, winning the opener 3-0 against Air Force on Sept. 22, and dropping a 3-2 series to Boise State on Saturday. “Considering where we’re at, it wasn’t a bad weekend,” Nelson said. “We feel like we should’ve gotten both wins, but we’re playing down two starters.”
The New Mexico cross country team is ready to officially start its 2016-2017 season with high expectations at the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational this Friday in Notre Dame, Indiana. It was at the Notre Dame Invite last year that the New Mexico women’s cross country team finished in first place, and then stormed to its dominant performances in the program’s first-ever national title in November.
The Lobos were two offside rulings away from winning their Conference USA opener against the Kentucky Wildcats.Instead, they walked away from Sunday’s match with a 1-0 loss. A loss that broke a five-game winning streak. Less than two weeks ago, Kentucky held the No. 21 spot. A week later, it was the Lobos who inhabited that ranking.
New Mexico junior running back Richard McQuarley has been consistent in the running game so far, but he got to do something for the first time earlier this season — play in front of his mother as a Lobo. Head coach Bob Davie said the season opener was special for the running back, because his mother, Sharon McQuarley, flew in from Mississippi to make the game.
Sometimes following the gameplan and outplaying an opponent doesn’t translate into a victory. Occasionally a team just needs to get a break. New Mexico could manage to catch whatever it needed in a 2-1 loss to Air Force on Sunday afternoon.
Solutions by The State News
