NM State Sports Wrap up Report 2022-23

 

This wasn’t a good school year in NM State Sports, but the bright spots were really bright.  I’ll start with the good stuff.

 

People didn’t have a lot of expectations for Aggie Football even with a new coach, who was known for turning around programs.  Even Coach Kill didn’t expect this much success in Year 1.  He beat one of the Aggies’ rivals (UNM) and beat Liberty, who’d been in the Top 25 earlier in the season.  With a waiver, the Aggies were bowl eligible.  Granted, there wasn’t much of an Aggie fan showing at the game (NM ticket sales were terrible), but the team showed up and won.  This also broke Coach Kill’s personal winless streak in bowl games.

 

There were expectations for Aggie Soccer.  Coach Baarts had been steadily building the program.  They had a very tough, but competitive road tour to start the season.  At home, they went undefeated.  It was fun to be able to go to the pitch every game and feel that your team has a decent chance of winning.  They won a tight conference tournament and suffered a heartbreaking loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

 

And now the bad.  Basically everything else.

 

Aggie Volleyball lacked firepower last season.  For this season, Coach Jordan recruited a bunch of hitters.  What was unanticipated was losing their setters and having to essentially use their emergency setter for much of the season.  Even before then, the coach had trouble finding playing time for his arsenal of hitters.  The players never coalesced into a team.  Transfer grad Molly Johnson eventually took over leadership of the team, but it was too late and they didn’t have the cohesion or setters to win. 

 

It was sort of the same situation with Aggie Softball.  Last season, the team was short on the arms.  This season, Coach Rodolph recruited several new pitchers.  Unfortunately, they didn’t really pan out.  Aydenne Brown was the best of the bunch, but overuse probably shortened her effectiveness later in the season.  Kayla Brown was the team’s star thumper.  Newcomer Jillian Taylor was exciting to watch.  There were other good players, but the team’s offense never seemed to live up to its potential.  It was a bit of a shock to me that they didn’t make the conference tournament.    

 

Coach Kirby had taken over a very competitive Aggie Baseball program from Coach Green last season.  It was a quick slide into non-competitiveness.  The life and the good recruits were sucked out of the team.  Somehow, they straggled into the conference tournament and won.  They nearly even won their first game in the NCCA Tournament. 

 

That was last year.  This year, they got worse.  Their two best pitchers were drafted and there was nothing to replace them.  They lost players to the portal before the season and steadily lost key players to injury during the season.  After going 0-7 to start the season, including a loss an NAIA school, Coach Kirby was released.  He’d never gotten a contract extension after winning the WAC Tournament.  Apparently, AD Mario Moccia wasn’t convinced Kirby was going to improve the program, even with the tournament win, and gave him a quick hook.  The team didn’t do any better afterward.  They’ve got the heart, but not the talent to compete.                

 

Coach Adams took over a Women’s Basketball program in shambles.  She managed to beat the UNM Lobos, who had owned the Aggies for several years, and that was a titanic struggle.  The team was a bunch of mismatched parts, but the coach got them to play hard.  They lost heartbreakers all season long, but kept fighting back.  They just needed one more good piece to really succeed. 

 

Then there’s the Aggie Men’s Basketball team.  I hashed most of this out in an earlier post.  Since then, two players have come forward with a lawsuit, Shakiru Odunewu and Deuce Benjamin.  Another player and a staff member, both unnamed, were also part of the suit.  They confirmed the rumors of their assault and named three players as the perpetrators.  Coach Heiar, Associate Coach Dominique Taylor, and the NMSU Board of Regents were also named in the suit. 

 

The assault details were . . . uncomfortable . . . to say the least.  They were of a sexual nature.  Apparently everyone on the team got the treatment from these three guys, but some got it worse.  (Interestingly, Shak and Deuce were the biggest and smallest guys on the team respectively.)  Finally, they reported the treatment to the coaches, who didn’t care.  Dominique even reportedly laughed and said, “What do you want me to do about it?”  Wrong answer.  Deuce’s dad, an alumni ex-player, said he tried to get a hold of AD Moccia, but never got a response.          

 

I was shocked.  A co-worker, who knew Deuce, who’s a local kid, was downright angry.  He questioned why neither of these guys fought back.  Perhaps it because everyone was getting the treatment and some hazing is normal.  Later though, listening to a comic book podcast with some veterans, they were talking about their military experience with a form of hazing called, “Gay chicken.”  I was made . . . uncomfortable . . .  listening to these stories.  (“The Navy guys were the worst, because they meant it.”)    

 

From a brief chat with Director of Player Development, Darian Graham, while getting pizza for the Superbowl, he didn’t seem disturbed by the hazing.  “It’s overblown,” he said.  I’m somewhat inclined to believe that the staff really didn’t know how bad it had gotten.  When they were told, they might have thought the players were whining over normal hijinks.  I can see where the players were reluctant to talk about it for so long because of the sexual nature of the harassment. 

 

Whatever the nature of what was going on, it went way too far.  Judging from the team’s poor performance, the hazing obviously didn’t help them bond.  Coach Heiar was even mixing and matching groups of players on court trying to find a combination of guys were willing to play together.  Alternately, Heiar and Taylor knew how bad the hazing had gotten, but by the point they knew there were hard feelings by everyone on the team.  There would have been no fixing it without dismissing the offenders, leaving the team shorthanded, and exposing what had happened. 

 

The one real question a lot of people, including myself, have concerns Athletic Director, Mario Moccia.  After the shooting, he was seriously questioned by the Media about the allowing the team to continue playing.  I can answer that.  Alabama’s star player was involved in a shooting during the season.  They ended up with a number one seed going into the NCAA Tournament as punishment.  Then again, that’s Alabama, not NMSU. 

 

The staff had done their due diligence in keeping track of the players and Mike Peake had willfully circumvented them.  Peake got three other players involved and a couple of coaches were questioned, but nobody on the Aggie side was charged.  (Whew! was probably their reaction.) There wasn’t an obvious staffer to fire.  Peake was taken off the team, but the other players only received a one-game suspension.  (One of them had violated his parole by getting involved and couldn’t leave the state for games for a month.)  After all this, the team was not playing well on court, as you’d expect, but the bad play continued well into the conference schedule. 

 

Mario’s apologetic attitude towards the team changed into irritation over the course of the season.  I’m sure Heiar was going to be let go at the end of the season, even if the buyout hurt.  Did Mario know about the hazing before it came out?  Was he just trying to ride it out to the end of the season and cover up the hazing?  Somehow, he missed getting fired when Heiar was let go and wasn’t named in the lawsuit.  If Mario knew, nobody could prove it. 

 

Mario got a five-year contract extension right before the outgoing chancellor left.  I’ve heard from multiple sources that the contracts of all the NM State coaches are tied to his.  If Mario is fired, all the coaches are released from their contracts.  I almost have to believe this because Mario is still there.  He’s generally done a good job and gotten the Aggies back into a conference and seems to know everyone in college sports.  The university likely doesn’t want to lose him.  Still, any more scandals, he’s out.

 

Speaking of the new conference affiliation, what are NM State’s prospects in Conference-USA next school year?  The good news is that the best basketball team, FAU, and the best football team, UTSA, will not be there.  The bad news is that, even with a raft of defections, it’s still probably a better conference than the WAC.  Also, a lot of the schools in C-USA are in the east.  UTEP has had virtually no success in any sport since moving to the conference.  I keep wondering if the time zone difference is one of the problems.

 

I think Football and Soccer are the best equipped to do well in the new conference.  With their coaching and recent success, I think they’ll be competitive out of the box.  Volleyball and Softball, however, I just don’t know.  The coaches should be able to recruit better for the new conference, but both programs fell well behind in the expanded WAC, which they used to dominate.  C-USA had two Top 25 Volleyball teams last year.  The Aggies had trouble beating UTEP, who wasn’t one of those two.

 

Baseball is a disaster and will need a new coach.  He’ll have to turn it around against a conference that is known for good baseball.  (I’m not sure if those good teams are leaving though.)  I like the direction of the Women’s Basketball program.  Give Coach Adams a couple of years, I could see her building a very good program, but I don’t guarantee it. 

 

Men’s Basketball is a real wildcard.  The entire Heiar team and staff are all gone.  It’s going to be a complete rebuild for NMSU.  They’ve hired Sam Houston State’s Coach Jason Hooten.  His main qualification was that he’d beaten the Aggies the last two seasons.  Sam Houston is also moving into C-USA, so that’s going to be another rivalry.  I’m sure Coach Hooten will be recruiting high character players, but apart from that, there’s no telling what will show up on court.  In this transfer portal era, don’t count out the possibility of putting together a good team on the fly.  There will be players wanting to come.  Since the team is wide open, they’ll all have a good chance of playing. 

 

I suspect it’s going to be a difficult year upcoming.  The lawsuit is going to court at some point.  It should include charges against the offending players, but if it’s just a big money suit and settlement by the university, then only the lawyers will be made whole.  There’s a possibility of some athletic success in C-USA, but just being competitive in most of the sports would likely be the best outcome.