More from Chris Hickman

I got a lot of good response from this story on former Aggie big man Chris Hickman. 

Since people seemed to like it, here is the entire interview via email. He talks about teammate William Benjamin, expands on his current business and what NMSU meant to him.

Basically I was wondering if you could fill us in on what brings you back to town?  How often do you come back?
We come to town at least once a year.  Many times we are just passing through quickly but we try to make time frequently to visit friend, my aunt and uncle (Bob & Betty McCasslin) and of course to get our fill of green and red chile.  Especially Chope’s!!


Which members of that team are you still familiar with?
William Benjamin, Ron Putzi, Randy Brown

Were you aware that William Benjamin won a state championship this year as a coach at Las Cruces High? Could you see him as a coach?
Yes, and definitely.  Benj was a student of the game.  In addition, benj could always do anything he set him mind to do.

You and your wife both had very good careers here and was wondering what las cruces and New Mexico State mean to you and the business success that you have enjoyed.
I feel being in team sports really give you a great base for life.  You have to learn to work with others, leverage strengths, cover weaknesses and get to experience the highest hihs and the lowest lows and then get out of bed the next day and move forward.

How did it come about that you came to New Mexico State?
Kind of a fun story.  I was being recruited by about a dozen Division I schools.  My Uncle (Bob McCaslin) swung by the basketball department and gave Asst. Coach Jeff Reep my recruiting tape.  Coach Reep decided to come watch a game and then asked to me come visit NMSU after the game.  I had already used all of my official visits by this time so my dad and I drove down to NMSU from Wichita KS instead of a normal recruiting trip.  I really didn’t think I would end up at NMSU, but between the Pan Am, Coach Reep and most important, Dean Steelman, I was totally convinced to come to NMSU.  I knew I wouldn’t play in the NBA so school was incredibly important to me and Dean Steelman was probably 80% of the reason I came to NMSU.

I don’t think there were too many four-year players at that point under Neil so what was that like?
Our team was made up of almost an entirely new team every single year.  Benj, Putzi and I were the only continuity year to year.  So it was interesting to constantly learn new players, etc. every year.  

At what point did you meet Tammy?  
Freshman year.  We started dating the night of midnight madness our Freshman year and never looked back.  We got married the summer between our Junior and Senior years.

Obviously you have earned success after college but could you describe where playing on a Sweet 16 team fits in the accomplishments throughout your life?
Basketball was such a huge part of my life.  It’s hard to express to people how many hours you spend doing this stuff.  Some people are just incredibly gifted but most of us spend thousands and thousands of hours working so to have the opportunity to realize the moments that you imagine in all of those hours of practice is incredible.  Kids don’t sit around the table dreaming of closing that next business deal or negotiation, the dream about this kind of stuff.  And to get to play through a Sweet Sixteen sticks with you forever and ever. 

Does the wins being vacated take any of the luster off your time as a basketball player at NMSU or would you have done things the same way if you could go back? Do you still follow New Mexico State basketball?
This is an interesting topic.  NMSU and many of us on the team were effectively punished because of a coach that had lapses in moral and ethical behavior.  The NCAA is completely screwed up.  Huge sanctions are brought against schools, wins are vacated and players that had nothing to do with the issues in question get painted with a broad brush of sanctimonious BS.  Did McCarthy knowingly break the rules?  Yes.  Did he force his assistants to do things in this regard?  Yes.  Did most of us know about many of these things, no.  However, at the end of the day, the coach loses his job but the university gets hammered.  And the coach can go onto the next thing, many times with impunity.  This system is broken.
So, no, I have no regrets for my time and career as an Aggie and proudly wear my Sweet Sixteen today.  Our achievements in my time at NMSU are shared between me, my teammates, the school and the community in Las Cruces.  The Heat attack kids of 1992 live in not only my memories but those of hundreds if not thousands of people in Las Cruces and those memories are the fond ones.

Finally can you just briefly talk about your current professional life?


As much as basketball meant to me in my life up to 1992, NMSU engineering, the Electric Utility Management Program, Dean Steelman, Satish Ranade and, most importantly, Professor William Kersting have painted the success of my professional life.  There are dozens of professors at NMSU, like David Smith in the business school that helped shape my education, but Prof was my mentor, friend and the reason that I actually stayed in Electrical Engineering instead of moving over to civil or mechanical.  My sophomore year I decided that EE was just too ‘imaginary’.  Growing up in the Midwest, I was used to using my hands and thinking about the microscopic world of electronics, computers, etc., just wasn’t that interesting to me.  And then I took my first power class with Prof and the rest is history.  After a long and incredible careen at PNM working for spectacular people like Roger Flynn, Dennis Hines and Gene Wolf who all took the time to help me grow both personally and professionally, I had the opportunity to work on Federal Energy Policy, State Regulatory Policy and then consult for a variety of fun and interesting clients before forming Innovari, Inc.  Innovari, Inc. has allowed me to create a third family.  My first I was born into, my second became NMSU and Las Cruces through some spectacular times and now I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to handpick people I’ve worked with over my career in the power industry and do something truly amazing for the grids of the world.  Without geeking out on you, we have created a way to improve the power grid utilization from the 43% it operates at today up something more like 60 or 65% utilization.  This will save our country and other countries around the world, billions and billions of dollars of inefficient infrastructure.
NMSU was a key part of how I learned to be a part of a high performing team.  How to create one, build one, be a part of one and how to ‘captain’ one.  Hard to express the importance of my time at NMSU.  Especially since the single best and most important  thing that has ever happened in my life happened when I met Tammy there.  So Las Cruces and NMSU will always be in my heart and we will always finds ways to make it back and spend time there.  This time the coaching staff has been nice enough to help us so we can show our 6 (Brody) and 8 (wyatt) year old boys the Pan Am!
  

NMSU schedule released

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?

Aggies to play at Gonzaga?

It sounds like the New Mexico State men's basketball schedule is fairly close to completion. Following is a list of non-conference opponents, some known that I have written about in previous posts, and a couple I have heard of recently, most notably the possible addition of Gonzaga on the road. Some games I'm not sure of on the dates.

Nov. 9-11 vs. Western Michigan, Tennessee State and Hawaii in Rainbow Classic
Nov. 15 vs. UTEP
Nov. 23 at UTEP
Dec. 4 vs. New Mexico
Dec. 11 at Arizona ($95,000 guarantee game for Aggies)
Dec. 17 at New Mexico

Other road non-conference opponents
Gonzaga
Colorado State University (I believe this game will be returned at some point)
Drake (Return game from BracketBuster game two years ago)

Other home non conference opponents
South Alabama (return from last season)
University of Northern Colorado
Prairie View A&M
Northern New Mexico

Rivalry Games occur with students in Cruces

In addition to scheduling up with tough non-conference opponents like Colorado State and Arizona (there will be at least one more high qualify non-conference addition), the New Mexico State schedule makers also focused on landing rivalry games against New Mexico and UTEP when students are still on campus.

The Aggies play I-10 rival UTEP on Friday, Nov. 15 at the Pan American Center and then travel to El Paso on Saturday, Nov. 23.

The Aggies shift their focus to the Rio Grande Rivalry in December, hosting New Mexico on Dec. 4 and then traveling to The Pit on Dec. 17.

Two NMSU hoops changes to the staff

Marvin Menzies will have a slightly different staff in 2013.

Still in place are associate head coach Paul Weir (sixth year) and assistant Keith Brown (third year). But assistant Tony Delk left the program to be closer to family in the south while pursuing other opportunities after two years  at NMSU. Coordinator of Player Development Ryan Mack left to take a head coaching job at Shelbyville High School in Indiana.

Aerick Sanders will join Menzies on the bench and Eric Brand is expected to replace Mack. Both moves should be announced in the next week. 

Both men are young coaches who had successful playing careers at the college level and overseas. Menzies recruited Sanders to play at San Diego State, where he was a four-year player under Steve Fisher from 2000-2004. Sanders played in Europe before his playing career ended in 2009. Last year was his first season in the coaching ranks as an assistant at Montana State.

Brand played in four straight NAIA national championship games at Bethel College from 1996-2000, winning three. He was an All-American in 2000, a second-team All-American in 1999 and a honorable mention All-American in 2998. In 2010, Brand was selected to the Bethel College Hall of Fame.

Since his last game as a professional in 2009, Sanders returned to San Diego State and developed players independently before taking an assistant job last season.

Brand spent the last four years on the staff at Texas State. The Indiana native played in Europe for four years before two years as a graduate assistant at Baylor and a year at Tyler Junior College. 

NMSU Final Four

Photo by Shari V. Hill
Jahmar Young and Jonathan Gibson were part of an explosive offensive Aggies team in 2010. 

If you read this blog last year, I made a score prediction for most of the Aggies games throughout the season. I haven't picked the NCAA Tournament game for the past couple years because at a school like New Mexico State, getting to the tournament is still a significant accomplishment. It's only happened four times since 1994.

Perhaps if the Aggies were a favorite entering any Tournament first round game, we could look at it and pick the Aggies to move on, but beating a No. 4 seed is rare for a reason, even though it seemed like this year's draw was as good as they could ask for. St. Louis was eliminated in the second round by  Oregon relatively easy. So while we wait for Tournament wins, we can agree that reaching the NCAA Tournament has become the norm here at NMSU. Aggies coach Marvin Menzies has been to three now in the past four years and the last two. NMSU also went to the Tournament in 2007 under Reggie Theus. 

I wanted to try to compare these four modern teams. I got this idea after I was sent a Facebook link to a conversation between Wendell McKines, Fred Peete, Justin Hawkins and others about whose team was better.

So I thought we would match them up a little bit. 

I'm going  to seed the last four teams to reach the Big Dance and make my picks. It would be interesting to see what you think. 

No. 1 seed is the 2010 team. The Aggies were a scoring machine in 2010 with five players nearing double figures. NMSU scored 79 ppg in WAC play that year and shot 38 percent from 3-point range. This is the one team that played a competitive game in the NCAA Tournament, nearly upsetting Final Four bound Michigan State.

Key Players:

Hamidu Rahman

Troy Gillenwater

Jahmar Young

Jonathan Gibson

Hernst Laroche

Wendell McKines

Gordo Castillo

No. 2 is the 2007 — I didn't cover this team, but they certainly had size and were among the best rebounding teams in the country, pulling down 39 rebounds per game in WAC play. NMSU went 25-9 and 11-5 in a WAC that was much better from top to bottom.

Key Players:

Martin Iti

Hatila Passos

Elijah Ingram

Shaun Davis

David Fisher

Ted Knauber

Fred Peete

Justin Hawkins

Tyrone Nelson

Jonathan Gibson

No. 3 is the 2013 team — The latest Aggies team is seeded ahead of two years ago because of the development of Sim Bhullar. Bhullar dominated in the WAC Tournament to get the Aggies into the tournament but wasn't nearly as visible against St. Louis. He was a freshman so experience puts this team below the No. 1 and No. 2 seed.

Key Players:

Sim Bhullar

Renaldo Dixon

Bandja Sy

Daniel Mullings

KC Ross Miller

Terrel de Rouen

Tyrone Watson

Kevin Aronis

Remi Barry

No. 4 is the 2012 team — It was painfully evident how much this team relied on Wendell McKines in the Aggies NCAA Tournament loss to Indiana. Scoring was a struggle for each of the past two teams but McKines was the team's best shooter, rebounder, etc. Indiana zeroed in on him and the Aggies didn't have enough options to make up for it.

Key Players: 

Hernst Laroche

Hamidu Rahman 

Wendell McKines

Bandja Sy

Daniel Mullings

Tyrone Watson

Chili Nephawe

Semifinals

2010 vs. 2012 — Remember that the McKines in 2010 was a rebounding animal, surrounded by scorers, freeing him to run up and down, chase down extra possessions, etc. Hernst Laroche was at his greatest in 2010, surrounded by Jahmar Young and Jonathan Gibson on the wing and Troy Gillenwater  in the post, where he gradually moved away from his next year. Could freshman year Daniel Mullings guard either/or senior Gibson or junior Young for an entire game. I just don't think the 2012 team had enough offensive punch with the bulk of the offense centered about McKines while 2010 had at least three consistent offensive weapons.

2010 advances

2007 vs. 2013 — Experience gives this game to the 2007 club. They certainly have the bodies to throw at Sim Bhullar with centers Hatila Passos and Martin Iti, perhaps even big Trei Steward. Ingram would have a field day with last year's point guard position I think, and if it was close, Ingram made some big shots. I think Passos, Justin Hawkins and Tyrone Nelson would be a tough matchup for the frontcourt players from last year's team of Bhullar, Tyrone Watson and Bandja Sy. I think Hawkins and Nelson are two of the Top 5 players from the past seven years and Fred Peete and Daniel Mullings could be a wash.

2007 advances

Championship

2007 vs. 2010. 

Some of the matchups to consider 

PG: Hernst Laroche (Jr.) vs. Elijah Ingram (Sr.)

SG: Jonathan Gibson (Sr.) vs. Fred Peete (Jr.)

SF: Jahmar Young (Jr.) vs. Justin Hawkins (Jr.)

PF: Wendell McKines (Jr.) vs. Tyrone Nelson (Jr.)

C: Hamidu Rahman (Jr.) vs. Hatila Passos (Jr.)

I would love to watch this game. From an offensive standpoint. I have PG, SG and PF as a wash. Passos would be a tough matchup for Rahman and junior season Hawkins wasn't the all-around offensive player that senior season Hawkins was so I give a slight edge to JY, who could score on anyone. The benches would have a big impact on this game. 2010 was Gillenwater's best season at NMSU. Not a great post defender but he could be the best offensive player here in the past seven years. Each team had shooters off the bench but to me Gillenwater's versatility for a guy his size gives 2010 the win. If they needed to, the Aggies could play Rahman, Gillenwater and McKines along the front line to match 2007 on the glass. 

NMSU schedule notes

In anticipations of a weakened league slate, New Mexico State coach Marvin Menzies has scheduled aggressively for next season.

There are rumors of a couple other games against very good mid majors that will make this season's schedule arguably the toughest since Menzies' first year when the Aggies played away at Duke, Louisville and on neutral court against Texas and West Virginia.

But so far here is a tentative look at some of the opponents/dates on the Aggies non-conference schedule:

Nov. 9-11 Three games in Hawaii's Rainbow Classic against Western Michigan, Tennessee State and Hawaii. The Hawaii game should be on ESPN as part of tipoff marathon.

Dec. 4 vs New Mexico
Dec. 11 at Arizona ($95,000 guarantee game for Aggies)
Dec. 17 at New Mexico

 I believe December will also include both I-10 rivalry games against UTEP

Other Home opponents
South Alabama (return game from last season)
Drake (return game from BracketBuster two years ago)

I expect the Aggies to fill out their schedule with up to four home games against lower tier teams