Oof. Tough start in the 2nd half. Aggies are a well coached team and we're still learning what our new coach in putting in place. Just play hard, boys. Leave it out on the court Billy Gillispie style.
Miner Aggie game thread
- Thread starter MinerManiac
- Start date
Not a great UTEP day…week…month!
Can this day get any worse? Losing to a UNT team that we should have beat, and now getting destroyed by the Aggies. Ugh.
Very nice run by the Aggies. They are the better team right now. We have a ways to go but it's only game 2 under Coach Golding. We will get better.
Been all downhill since the LaTech game
It's been obvious that we're going to lose for a while, but at least we're competing to the end
Six point loss, but it doesn’t feel it was that close.
As Oso alluded, the game was not as close as the final score. We got beat down pretty good by the Aggies tonight. No worries. Game 2 under Coach Golding.
Goulding's inability to secure a competent big is going to bite us in the butt all year. This wouldn't have been such a huge problem if we had a few more good guards but we don't. Feels like bigger teams are just going to bully us all year. Boum is still reckless despite his 20+ points. Kennedy is going to have to step up and be that 3rd scorer. The defense was tough. Rough day for the revenue sports but at least the women won.
Agree. Plus, we ended up essentially playing 8 guys. Maring and White just played a couple of minutes, so our true depth is not nearly as good as was anticipated. Obviously, the defensive intensity from the first half did not carry over to the second half. But the biggest issue, as is generally the case when we play the Aggies, was the rebounding disparity. Lots of areas to work on. Good to see the competitiveness at the end of the game.
needed shooters.
when Alfred Hollins shot that 3 point air ball i new Utep was in trouble.
when Alfred Hollins shot that 3 point air ball i new Utep was in trouble.
Guess my man Saterfield is down at the bottom of the pile with Onyema and Giffa.
We are a defensive based team and if players can't guard they likely won't play. We need to get better on the boards or we will be in for a long year. Aggies are very good and have tons of talent and it is early. The rematch in a few weeks will tell us a lot about what this team is going to be.
It appeared to me that defense played well for awhile. I liked how we fill passing Lanes and get steals. However we didn't turnovers into points. The shooting was just there and gave them way too many offensive boards to have a chance. They fought though til the end, so that got them up to a D+
I didn't see the game. Last night's environment is tougher than anything they'll see in conference. The competition is also very similar to the top team(s). I think we'll be fine and are still on track for 18+ wins.
Might want to check the Miners conference road records the last 4 years. Doesn’t matter if there’s 800 or 8000 there, they’re losing the majority of their road games regardless.
Might want to check who was coaching the Miners the last four years...
Guess we will find out on Friday. Pacific's crowd will be under 3k, probably not even 2k
That will most likely be a loss. I actually don't have them winning a road game until either at UTSA or RICE. Maybe they'll win 3 on the road all year.
It doesn't change the fact that NMSU is the toughest conference environment they'll play in all year. If they kept fighting and kept it respectable I like our chances of beating the weaker teams in conference. (@MTSU, @UTSA, @RICE, @USM) At the moment I'm not predicting any wins until Golding proves he's not Terry on the road. He can start with the Pacific game.
May I just throw something in for your consideration? If Golding is holding out Saterfield and White due to their defensive liabilities I can accept that to a point, but where does a player's offensive/defensive ( +-) abilities determine floor time vs bench time?
In the Aggie game those players he elected to play with his defense first strategy yielded 50% FG for the game and over 57% in the second half. Those same players provided a pathetic 44% from the field.
Not saying he's right or wrong; just saying I think it's worth some consideration about keeping all that scoring on the bench. He is the coach and I'm thrilled to have him especially when you consider his predecessor, but I’m afraid of wasted opportunities. As I said before defense wins games, but only if you can score at your end.
The main question I have about the game (I attended,) was this: We all saw that Tydus was totally out of gas the entire second half and was a defensive liability, so why was he not replaced? Look at the game tape and you'll see his body language, no footwork, no jumping and no defense. He was lurching around. Totally understand that he expended it all in the first half but Bonke was on the bench and could have at least defended the paint.
Not to dismiss your question about playing time, as I have only had the game against Western NM to gauge Satterfield and White. I will say that the 50% first half shooting stat doesn't fully address the Miners' defensive effort in that half. By pressuring the ball and cutting off passing lanes we were able to force the Aggies into 14 first half turnovers. Unfortunately their bigs are significantly better than ours, and our D does often leave outside shooters wide open, leading to that 50% mark. Still, overall I liked what I saw defensively in the first half.
In the second half we obviously weren't nearly as effective. I have two theories for this:
- Jans and his team made adjustments that limited how disruptive our D was in the 2nd half, or
- Golding's decision to shorten the bench left us without the fresh bodies needed to keep up that defensive intensity.
Here's another question. Why does NMSU continue to out recruit UTEP in basketball? Now that we're soon to be conference members, this rivalry could get worse.
Yet, UTEP still loses to them and CUSA just plucked two teams from that “crappy conference”.
Recruiting matters, but having a coach who can develop players matters significantly more. Jans and his predecessors at NMSU have just out coached and out developed UTEP since Gillespie. We do need to expand recruit more internationally though. Sometimes you get Gerhke, sometimes you get Wilms.
I think Barbee did a good job of developing players, too. He developed Julyan Stone and Randy Culpepper and really knew how to utilize Stefon Jackson.
Barbee was outcoached at times but I thought developing players was a great strength of his.
Barbee brought in "stone unturned" recruits. For example, Williams, McCulley Culpepper from Memphis and Stone literally in the backyard of UC- Santa Barbara. For whatever reason mid majors and power programs really didn't even give them a whiff. I clearly remember the day Kap interviewed Stone after he signed and he really did not have any good offers until Barbee found him. Bo almost as well out of Dallas suburb Lancaster.
Floyd "high risk-high reward" failed recruiting
Marvin Menzies NMSU strategic recruiting
