Although the season opener is still a month away, New Mexico head coach Craig Neal is already evaluating what the Lobos can do to have a successful season.
During a press conference before UNM’s first official practice on Friday, Neal said the staff and players are working hard to get back to the same level they were at not too long ago.
To Neal, and much of the Lobo fanbase, the past two seasons didn’t meet the program’s expectations.
During the 2014-2015 season, the Lobos lost more games than they won, going 15-16 overall and 7-11 in Mountain West play.
This was a huge difference from the previous year, when the team went 27-7 overall — including 15-3 in conference — earning its third straight Mountain West Tournament title, automatically punching their ticket to the NCAA Tournament.
In the 2015-2016 season the Lobos finished 17-15 overall, and 10-8 in conference.
“I think the two years that we struggled, we didn’t meet our expectations on what our standards are,” Neal said. “I think our points per possession were where we wanted them. It’s just our defensive point per possession, it can’t be above one. Teams that have been really good have been below one.”
This year, the team is returning 10 players, including Elijah Brown and Tim Williams who were All-Mountain West last year. Brown and Williams are the only two returning players in the Mountain West that averaged 16 or more points last season.
Recently, Brown has garnered national attention, being listed as the league's best player in a few media outlets, including Athlon and The Sporting News.
But the 6-foot-4 inch guard says he is not paying too much attention to the preseason acclaim. Instead, he says he is focusing on seeing improvement.
“I take it year by year,” he said. “I know what I want to do myself, in terms of what I expect out of myself and my teammates. I want to be a lot better than I was last year, that’s the goal.”
Last season, Brown played 32 games and started in 29 of those. He had a total of 694 points, averaging 21.7 a contest.
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Williams, a 6-foot-8-inch forward, started 32 out of 32 games and recorded 539 points, averaging 16.8 per contest.
The team is also adding a walk-on, Holt Shelley, and four new players via scholarship: Jalen Harris, Damien Jefferson, Aher Uguak and Connor MacDougall.
MacDougall is an NCAA All-American transfer. The 6-foot-9-inch forward was ranked as the 12th best center in the 2014 recruiting class by Fox Sports Next.
Neal said he told his team that there are no locked positions yet, and that he expects every player to individually be the best they can be. If the team is serious about what it wants to accomplish, the players are going to have to put in the work, he said.
“I think our guys understand what they have to do,” Neal said.
Isabel Gonzalez is a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. She mainly covers men’s soccer and basketball. She can be reached at sports @dailylobo.com or on Twitter @cisabelg.
