Lobos prepare for Wednesday's game in ‘other’ tournament, the NIT
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall the moment Eric Olen walked into the room to meet with his team about the next step.
The first-year University of New Mexico basketball coach had just gotten word that his Lobos received a bid to the National Invitational Tournament and would play their first postseason game Wednesday night in The Pit.
Left out of the NCAA Tournament following a 23-win regular season, the secondary tournament turned down by many Power 4 teams was now the Lobos’ lifeline to at least one more game.
The NIT’s selling point?
Top seed. Home-court advantage as long as the team stays alive through the first three rounds.
His message to the players? We’re still playing.
But he needed his guys to jump in with both feet to tell the NIT they really were in. While Olen claims the decision was ultimately up to him, he said Tuesday he did get a feel from his guys before signing off on it.
“To me, it’s about those guys getting an opportunity to continue their basketball careers and us being a part of it,” he said. “I really enjoy being around this group, and I really enjoy coaching this team. Ultimately, it’s about his group staying together a little longer.”
The Lobos are one of five Mountain West teams in the 32-team NIT. A win on Wednesday opens the door to a set of logistical challenges that only get more complex the longer the team stays alive.
With the New Mexico Activities Association taking over The Pit for the annual state spirit competition this weekend, the Lobos also lose access to their own practice facility. The adjacent Davalos Center, which houses the practice court and the coaching offices for the men’s and women’s teams, is also being used by the NMAA as a staging and warmup area for dance and cheer teams.
That means the Lobos will need alternative housing for practice should they advance to Sunday’s second round against either Utah Valley or George Washington. That game would be in The Pit, but the arena would then fall into someone else’s hands yet again immediately after the game.
The annual Ty Murray Invitational, a fixture stop on the Professional Bull Riders tour, has the arena booked Monday through the rest of next week. Facilities crews will turn the historic basketball venue into a dirt-filled, fan-friendly, pyrotechnics-heavy extravaganza for a few days.
UNM has not finalized plans for what would come next and, frankly, Olen couldn’t care less at this point. Very much a one-game-at-a-time kind of coach, the only thing he’s worried about is the next step, not something that requires a couple of moves to reach.
“I think the thought, and we talked a lot about this with coach, is do we have it in us to keep playing?” said graduate transfer Luke Haupt, one of at least half a dozen players on the roster who are likely done with their eligibility once the season ends.
Haupt is in his sixth year of college ball, having missed one full season due to injury. The son of a legendary prep coach in Southern California, he said basketball is somewhere in his future, be it as a player or coach.
For now, the idea of wearing a Lobo uniform one last time — or a few, to be clear — was enticing enough to find the drive to keep going.
“I do, personally, want to do this. I want to keep playing as much as I can and the fact that we get to have a home game in The Pit again is exciting,” Haupt said.
To mark Wednesday’s game, Haupt and a couple of other players walked around in old-school Lobos T-shirts with the familiar wolf profile logo with “New Mexico” scrawled across the chest in turquoise lettering.
He admitted it was a letdown to lose to San Diego State in the semifinals of the Mountain West Tournament, a loss that effectively eliminated UNM from any hope of making the NCAA Tournament. As it turned out, the Lobos probably needed to win the conference title to even make the field since regular-season champion Utah State got the league’s only bid and was handed a No. 9 seed.
Both Haupt and Olen said they chose not to watch the Mountain West title game between Utah State and San Diego State. Haupt said he did tune in to the Selection Show but did so with a sense of reservation because he knew his team had no chance of making it.
Olen answered the question about whether he watched or did something else with a simple, “I did not.”
NOTES
Sam Houston and UNM have had a couple of common opponents this season. Both beat Wyoming, while the Bearkats split a pair with New Mexico State, and the Lobos lost their only meeting with the Aggies. … Sam Houston finished in second place in Conference USA behind Liberty — coached by former Lobos coach Ritchie McKay — but both teams were left out of the NCAA when Kennesaw State rose through the field and won the league’s automatic bid.
