[Let me say up front that the title is a bit misleading. I’m sorry.]
It’s been awhile (12-20-24). There has been momentous news in the interim. NMSU has lost their biggest cheerleader, Athletic Director Mario Moccia. Two events brought on Mario’s abrupt firing: a new university president and the release of a report by the New Mexico DOJ. The report blamed institutional failings for the Men’s Basketball hazing incidents of 2022-23 and recommended, essentially, more HR stuff to bureaucratically stop this from ever happening again. (Rolling my eyes.)
There was no recommendation of firing Moccia, but it wasn’t just the report. There has been at least one more lawsuit since the first player lawsuit was settled. Also, I’d been told Moccia’s contract was tied to all of the other Aggie coaches. As it turned out, only Football Coach Jerry Kill’s contract was tied to his. When Kill left, Mario may have been on borrowed time.
If this had been done when the Basketball season had been canceled (2-16-23) or even after the shooting at UNM earlier, the reaction would have been, Well, that’s too bad, but somebody had to pay the price. But two years later and after giving Mario a five-year contract extension, the administration looks like a bunch of idiots. Just to make it worse, they passed over two qualified people under Moccia and promoted a woman that was the Title IX director to be the athletic director. This was clearly a political move done for appearances.
As the saying goes, “Graveyards are full of indispensable men.” Aggie Athletics will go on, but this was a self-immolating move. What the program lost in Moccia wasn’t just his experience and dedication. He had all of the contacts in Santa Fe to get government funding. He had an uphill battle there and his successor will be starting from nothing. Mario seemed to know everybody in college sports. It was how he was able to lure Coach Kill here. Mario personally worked the phones to sell tickets to local businesses and organizations. He had relationships with the boosters to fund the programs. As an alumni and a former star athlete here, Mario desperately wanted NMSU to succeed.
I thought Mario did a great job here. He was always on the Aggie Coach’s Show and on Football and Men’s Basketball pregame shows. From listening to his passionate
exclamations, at least I knew he really cared like a fan. A couple of days after his firing, he
released this message on X. He’d
received over 500 messages of support from former Aggie players, fans, and
other people he’d worked with. They
fired him as the villain and now he’s the martyr.
What’s going to be the fallout from this? Braun Cartwright and Chet Savage, who were passed over, will be leaving, thus increasing the brain drain in the department. (This is a prediction, but a pretty easy one.) Other than that, who can say? Mario got his extension, probably mostly for getting the university into Conference-USA. If there’s any instability on that front, Aggie Athletics may be in serious trouble.
Meanwhile, the guy who really did deserve to lose his job, Coach Greg Heiar, is currently back in DII and has one of the best programs in the country. It’ll be a while before anyone trusts him with a DI program again, though. There has been one good outcome, the three abusive players on basketball team are finally facing criminal charges for their gay sexualized hazing. Go fly that pride flag in your cell, boys. At least, hopefully, no further players at the university will put up with being gay-assaulted as a “team-building” exercise.
Elsewhere in other news, Diego Pavia took Vanderbilt to a bowl game victory and won his case against the NCAA. He’ll get another year of eligibility, since he started his football career in a junior college. Shiyazh Pete has entered the transfer portal and is fielding offers from Vanderbilt, Michigan, Stanford, and others.
In spite of the drama in the administration, the Men’s team focused on basketball. Coach Hooten finally got a win over his former university, Sam Houston, 75-71. Christian Cook scored 25 points and Peter Filipovity scored 20. Two days later, they faced LA Tech. They’d lost earlier in the week to UTEP, but were the pre-season #1 team in C-USA. They had two players leading the nation in a couple of stats. Their 6’11” forward was leading in shooting percentage and their point guard led in assist-to-turnover ratio. Unfortunately, they didn’t come to play. The Aggies took them apart, 78-48. Yes, that’s the score. The Aggies had four players in double digits. This was an afternoon game and there was a $10 ticket offer, but I couldn’t get dad to go with me, so I just listened over the radio.
The Women, meanwhile, had a tough road trip. They came back after the break to face #9 Oklahoma and lost 82-64. Molly Kaiser still scored 24. They won against Sam Houston, 79-61, with Molly scoring 29. However, they fell a couple days later to LA Tech, 67-58.
And here’s where I would usually begin my usual diarrhea of words describing going to the Women’s game against UTEP and describing the action. Real life intervened. I had car issues Friday night and went to Pep Boys the next morning. I briefly had some optimism that they’d fix my truck in time for me to go to the game or maybe even half of it. Not only did that not happen, they didn’t even fix the problem. I may have found another solution. We’ll update this situation at another time.
I do have to report one odd incident in the waiting room. There was family of eight there and they had little dogs with them. One girl had a pug dog in a sweater. He was walking on his hind legs and she was leading him around holding one of his paws. The dog looked very comfortable walking on two legs. It was like meeting Snoopy in real life. It was a bit disturbing.
What I missed was a convincing Aggie win, 65-49. The Miners hung with Aggies for the first half, but over a critical couple of minutes, the Miners went scoreless and the Aggies poured it on. The team shot 42% on 3’s and got 27 points off turnovers. Fanta Gassama was back in action and pulled down 12 rebounds. Molly Kaiser is on a mission. She scored 32 points. I’m really sorry I missed her performance.
In the evening, the Aggie Men played UTEP in El Paso to a sold out Don Haskins Center. 12,000 fans showed up and quite a few Aggie fans even made the trip. I was listening to the radio call. Jack Nixon was interrupted at one point, as the PA recognized his 45 years in broadcasting. (And it’s just not the same pregame show without Mario chipping in.)
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the massive crowd, the Miners played scared. The Aggies were up 38-25 at the half and won it going away, 85-57. Five Aggies were in double digits scoring. They were 56% shooting, 31% shooting 3’s, had 46 points in the paint, and 28 bench points. The telling stat was rebounds: the Aggies were up 40 to 21.
Miner Coach Joe Golding outright apologized to the fans after the game. Still, it was really good to see fans in El Paso turn out for the Miners. Let’s hope it’s another big crowd at the Pan-Am when they come here. Mario better be hitting the phones selling tickets . . . Oh, darn! Actually, it still should be okay, since the team is doing well, but good luck selling out when the team isn’t doing well.
They didn’t need me cheering today. Hopefully, I will be at the Women’s game next weekend.
Pre-Post Update: On Monday’s Aggie Coach’s Show, they said that when the Aggies got back home, they were met by a group of cheering fans. Coach Hooten said this was why he came here. He also got a round of applause from the crowd at the barbeque place they were at for the show.
Then the bad, the new AD made her debut. Oh boy. Host Adam Young was basically having to prompt her on upcoming Aggie events. There was no indication she thought it was part of her job to get the fans out to the games. Well, she did know the stars on the Softball team. Just keep her in the office, please.
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