Lobo basketball
Who: Arizona State vs. New Mexico
Where: The Pit
When: Sunday, 2 p.m.
Broadcast: No tv, no radio, streamed on MW+ app
Pregame: ABQJournal Pregame from the Pit at 1 p.m. on Journal's Youtube page ( YouTube.com/ABQJournal )
First-year Arizona State coach Randy Bennet is, obviously, going to try like crazy to beat the UNM Lobos in Sunday afternoon's exhibition game in the Pit.
And with 589 coaching wins under his belt — all at his previous school Saint Mary's — he's proven to be pretty darn good at it, too.
But as he brings his Big 12 Sun Devils squad east to the Pit for this exhibition games, he's also coming as a bit of a fan of a couple guys he's going up against.
First, there's Chris Howell, the current sixth-year guard playing his final college season for the Lobos who Bennett signed as part of the 2021 recruiting class at SMC — where Howell spent his first three seasons of college basketball from the fall of 2021 through spring 2024.
"He's a player. He was a player then, and he's proved it since," Bennett said of Howell, the San Diego native who transferred home to play for Eric Olen at UC San Diego for the 2024-25 season.
"I'll always be a big fan of Chris. He's a great kid and a great teammate. The whole deal. So I root for him. I'll even root for him Sunday afternoon."
While Bennett never questioned Howell's on-court knowledge and certainly understood why a reporter was asking him a few days ago about whether the 6-foot-6 guard looked the part of a future basketball coach himself back in this three seasons playing for the Gaels in Moraga, California, Bennett said there was always something else he would predict for Howell's future vocation.
"He's got such strong faith, I could see him being a pastor," Bennett said.
"Of course, he had a really high basketball IQ, too. Still does. He does sneaky stuff. You may not see his value in a stat sheet, I'm sure Eric (Olen, UNM's coach) would say the same. He's not gonna score big, but he'll make decisions that you can see he's two steps ahead of everybody. So I loved him as a player, and I love him as a kid. So a pastor or a coach, I could see either one and he'll be good at it."
Olen has called Howell a connector on the court who makes the team better even if the stat's don't show it, also noting his ability to fill in at whatever role the team needs in a given moment (last Sunday, as the team continued to try and shore up its rebounding, Howell had a team-best eight of them against Washington State).
As for Howell's thoughts on Bennett and playing at Saint Mary's, he credits some of the leadership his coaches and teammates talk about him having today with his time playing for Bennett and the Gaels.
Howell spent his first of three seasons at SMC redshirting — not playing a game, but preserving a year of eligibility before the current NCAA rules which allow five years of eligibility regardless of redshirting.
"I think as a freshman going into the program at Saint Mary's, I had to figure out a way of learning how to lead from essentially the back," Howell said. "As a redshirt freshman, you usually don't hear many people trying to lead from there, but in any way possible, that's what I really tried to instill."
SMC went to the NCAA Tournament in all three seasons Howell played under Bennett, who said the opportunity for Howell to go back to San Diego to play close to home for the 2024-25 season was a great one — both because of family being close, his older brother being on the UCSD staff (Mikey Howell is now an assistant coach for the UNM Lobos), but also because he got to play for Eric Olen.
Bennett, you see, is a UCSD graduate himself. And as a college basketball coach had the utmost respect watching how Olen transformed that program first into a Division II national power then oversaw the transition into Division I, where Olen and the Tritos were a possession away from upsetting Dusty May and Michigan in the 2025 NCAA Tournament — the first year UCSD was ever eligible for the Big Dance.
"I would tell the people down there (at UCSD), you better not lose that guy," Bennett said. "Whatever you gotta do, keep Eric."
As for Olen, the respect is mutual. And it's both as a coach who simply got his team to win a lot of games as it is as a coach who built a long-standing, successful program and culture around Gaels basketball.
"I think Randy's one of the best college basketball coaches in the country that people don't recognize enough because he was up there at Saint Mary's for so long," Olen said. "So much respect for what he built there."
As for the game...
What Bennett's teams at SMC did for so many years was as much about their own offensive efficiency and hitting shots as it was making it hell on opposing teams to ever get comfortable doing their own thing.
In his 25 seasons coaching the Gaels, Bennett's team ranked No. 1 in the country in defensive assist rate four times and in the top six (out of 300-plus teams) in Division I 14 out of 25 years.
"Assisted baskets are some of the most efficient baskets," Olen explained referring to why Bennett's highly-respected defense was so good at that particular, among many other, statistics.
"They're trying to eliminate those. They eliminate assists, they eliminate 3-point volume, and then they do a great job on the glass. ... You're gonna have to find some individual scoring in this type of matchup more than you would in maybe some different defensive schemes. But they're always one of the best defensive teams. They're always one of the best rebounding teams."
Of note, as reported Friday night by the Journal and in Saturday's print edition, Lobo transfer forward Rytis Petraits, the transfer from Cal, will miss Sunday's game with an ankle sprain that a week ago Olen expected would be healed enough by now to play. It is not.
It's not me, it's you
Many coaches spend the preseason focussing on themselves — improving the things your team wants to do game to game in the regular season.
But that was also after years of the preseason, by rule, being a Division I team playing against a Division II (or lower level) opponent. And just two preseason games.
Now that the NCAA allows three games and for DI vs. DI competition in the preseason, some coaches have tweaked their exhibition schedule preparation.
Asked Friday if the Lobos were still in a mode of focusing on the Lobos or on the Sun Devils for Sunday's game, Olen said, basically, yes.
"Well, I think we can do both," Olen said. "I think that's sort of the progression of the preseason. I think each time we've been able to spend a little more time or move towards the opponent preparation. We've done a little more each time."
And the second-year Lobos coach added it would be a wasted opportunity for his team not to try to get the most out of it in all facets because of the uniqueness of the ASU roster compared to some of the top teams UNM will face in the regular season.
"This is a team that poses some specific problems for us that maybe we won't see a ton during the regular season, but I think the best teams in our league or on our schedule are gonna have some of the same questions for us to answer in those games," Olen said.
No TV, no radio
Sunday's game will not be televised or on radio, but will be streamed on the Mountain West's new subscription-based MW+. Preseason broadcast rights are the decision of the home team and UNM chose this route to up either in-person attendance or boost subscriptions to the MW+ service, which every school in the league gets a cut of when people subscribe and are forced to pick a school to send part of their subscription money to.
The Journal will also have a pregame preview show online, as it does an hour before every Lobo men's basketball game, on the Journal's YouTube channel: YouTube.com/ABQJournal .
Geoff Grammer is the Sports Editor of the Journal, a podcaster, columnist and covers UNM Lobos basketball, among other things. Reach him at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.
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