NMSU released its schedule on Monday.
You have to give credit to the staff for this one. All four rivalry games are during the first semester while students are still around. It includes games I believe are winnable, or at least give the Aggies a chance to be competitive in road games at Gonzaga and Colorado State. For that reason I think it's NMSU's best schedule under Marvin Menzies because unlike his first year with games at Duke and Louisville, there are no games here where going into it, the Aggies are overmatched.
The RPI implications are tremendous if the Aggies take care of business. If they were able to get the CSU game and split with the Lobos, that could be the difference between a 15 seed in the tournament and maybe a 12 or a 13.
A couple quick notes on the schedule. The Colorado State game will be returned next year. The Hawaii game could be part of the ESPN marathon that tips off the season. The Arizona and Gonzaga game is worth $95,000 each to NMSU.
What are your thoughts? How many wins?
3 comments:
I like the first half of the schedule. Yes we're playing AZ and Gonzaga away, but the Aggies need to be pushed and tested in order to see if they can handle playing good competition in the NCAAs. Am I thinking the Aggies will make the NCAAs? Yes. The "new" WAC is one of the worst conferences I've seen. We can not be happy with just winning the WAC now. If we tank the first half of the season and breeze through the conference schedule we'll be lucky to get a 15 seed. We must win three out of four rivalry games also (at UNM will be rough).
Now the most important topic of this entire discussion....Will MM prepare the team properly or will the Aggies have the traditional slow start? Honestly this season should be MM's biggest year. He's taken the team to the NCAAs several times so what's next? Who cares about making the tourney. We need to win games there and beat good teams during the regular season. MM needs to get the kids ready early so the we can have a chance against AZ and Gonzaga. He must also get the team to take the rivalry games personal.
I think we can win well over 20 games this year. I have loses at Gonzaga, AZ, UNM games are a toss up (loss in ABQ), possible loss at HI tourney and one loss in the WAC (bad night). UTEP has a lot of unknowns with their highly touted recruiting class and the key is that they need to gel first before they'll be good. I just think there is more to why several top recruits went to UTEP (poor academics, bad attitudes, drama, legal issues).
I honestly don't think I'm far off with getting 25 or so wins. We are bringing back a lot of experience and size. MM just needs to make sure someone steps up and takes a leadership role which we didn't have last year.
Let's get a discussion going.
JH
Good schedule but wins will be tough.
At this point, we all know that the Aggies don't start winning until January. These games are Nov/Dec so...
it is essential to play tough games in nov. and dec. because there won't be any tough games in jan-march...until our ritual 1st round ncaa sacrifice....
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