Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The New Mexico State baseball team defeated No. 22 New Mexico by the score of 14-10 at Isotopes Park in Albuquerque, Tuesday, March 9.

With the win, NM State goes to 10-6 on the year, while the Lobos fall to 8-5 on the season. Sophomore Scott Coffman, an Albuquerque native, was credited with the win and goes to 1-1 on the year. He worked 3.1 innings and struck out five of the 14 batters he faced, while giving up only three hits and not allowing a ball.

"Coffman was brilliant today and he went out and played outstanding," head coach Rocky Ward said. "He showed leadership today by coming in with some pressure against our in-state rival and threw well."

Adam Heredia, a Las Cruces native, and Roswell native Justin Cooper also chipped in throwing a combined 4.1 innings, while left hander Ryan Beck threw 1.1 innings.  Continue Reading This Post >>

Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. - The New Mexico State athletic department released the season and single-game prices for the 2010 football season.

The 2010 NM State football home schedule includes non-conference opponents San Diego State on Sept. 11 and I-25 rival New Mexico on October 9. In addition, four WAC opponents will visit Las Cruces in 2010, including Fiesta Bowl Champion Boise State, Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, and Hawaii. The dates of the WAC games will be announced at a later date, pending completion of the WAC’s ESPN schedule.

Like 2009, a season ticket purchase is the best deal for Aggie fans, saving 56% off the single-game prices in most sections. Season tickets start for as little as $44 for general admission seats and chairback seats at midfield cost just $117. However, most seats in the stadium are priced between $47 and $52. Compare the season ticket prices to single-game prices and the savings for Aggie fans that choose season tickets is significant.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The Aggie baseball team will face in-state rival New Mexico today and tomorrow in Albuquerque at Isotopes Park. The Aggies and Lobos split a pair of games last week with UNM winning the first game 9-6 and the Aggies winning the second game 17-8. We talked with head coach Rocky Ward about those two games as well as the four game series against St. Joseph's in this week's interview. The Aggies have had pretty good success in Albuquerque the past few seasons winning there in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Last year was the only time the Aggies and Lobos did not play two games in Las Cruces and two in Albuquerque. The Aggies are 9-6 on the young season while New Mexico is 8-4 and coming off a 2-1 series victory over Southern Cal.

Both games against UNM this week are scheduled for a 3:05 p.m. first pitch. They can be heard on the radio (tape delayed) on KSNM AM 570 in Las Cruces at 6:00 p.m. but live streaming audio will be available via Aggie Access (subscription required). Live stats for today's game will also be available via the New Mexico athletic website.

Be sure to check out our interviews with Aggie men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies and Aggie women's head coach Darin Spence as the two coaches and teams head to Reno for the WAC tournament.

The women open up play tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 p.m. MT while the men will wrap up the first day's action on Thursday at 9:30 p.m. MT.

Both coaches are obviously very optimistic about their chances to win the tournament. Both of the top seeds in league play are on a roll, Utah State on the men's side has won 15 straight games and 14 straight conference games. On the women's side, Fresno State has won 17 straight games and went undefeated in WAC play winning all 16 games.

Both the Aggie men and the Aggie women face a dangerous first round opponent. For the men it's San Jose State, a team that defeated them in San Jose and a team that if they get hot behind the scoring of First Team All-WAC selection Adrian Oliver and Robert Owens, they have the talent to win the tournament. Likewise for Idaho, they have gotten hot at the right time. The Vandals struggled to open the season and lost their first two conference games but have won six of their final nine games and vaulted to a tie for 4th place over the final three weeks of the season.

For both teams to win the WAC title, they will have definitely had to take the toughest road. The Aggie men will have to defeat San Jose State, likely setting up a semifinal rematch with Nevada, a team that swept them this season and then if they can win that game they would face Utah State, a team that just beat them by 18 points.

The women have an equally daunting task. They must defeat Idaho, a team that swept them this season, then setting up a semifinal game with Fresno State who as we mentioned earlier is undefeated in league play this season. If they can get past that semifinal game it would set up a game against one of the teams from the other half of the bracket which includes Boise State, Nevada and Louisiana Tech.

On to today's links...  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the UNM series. You split the two games losing 9-6 and then winning 17-8. I thought the key series in the first game, even though you lost, was Scott Coffman coming in with bases loaded and nobody out and retiring three straight batters to keep you in the game at that point at 8-4.
Rocky Ward: The same thing happened in both games, the first and the last of the week, D.J. Simon was our man a year ago. He was the guy that beat Fresno to open the conference tournament, he was the guy we asked to go on two days rest to try to beat them and pitched his butt off in the finals and all of the sudden he's really struggled. UNM kind of got after him. Baseball has a lot of variance in it, some people call it luck. He's pitched into some poor luck. He's had a couple mechanical problems that he's worked with and we got behind early and New Mexico is a good baseball team. They were hot coming off of opening the season, at the time they played us they were 5-2. Scott Coffman came in and neutralized the game for us and gave us a chance. What we had missed the previous week, in particular in Arizona and maybe even in the Akron first game, we came from behind but we couldn't get over the top. We had a real chance to win that game against New Mexico. You give them some credit for closing us out but you also take some responsibility for not hitting with runners in scoring position and for not taking advantage.   Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the two games last week at Nevada and at Utah State? You were close at halftime in both of those games.
Marvin Menzies: I think a combination of factors, the bottom line is both of those places are really tough to play and they wear on you in reference to all the dynamics that go into playing on the road. I think that coupled with our shooting woes at Utah State and the defensive breakdowns we started to have kind of had a snowball effect and it was difficult to climb back in. In both cases there were runs that were made, in the Utah State was a little bit more significant run, but both games our opponents had runs where things clicked for them and went the other way for us and on the road as you know it's tough to fight back on the road.

bc.net: Do you think there's any benefit for your team in terms of familiarity having been able to play in the tournament venue just last week?
MM: I hope so. I think that there's something to be said with familiarity with a venue and your immediate surroundings. Having played there I'm hoping that bodes well for us having just played there the week before.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the games against Nevada and San Jose State?
Darin Spence: It was an interesting week to say the least. We put ourselves in position to win on the road at Nevada but just didn't quite get it done. But then we came back and took care of business with San Jose. The San Jose game was kind of rough. I think we were just a little emotionally drained from the game at Nevada so we played a little ugly at the beginning of the game but at the same time we made San Jose play that way as well. In the second half I thought we did a pretty good job and got rid of them and took care of our business. All in all we finished fourth in the league and we'll move on and get ready for the tournament.

bc.net: Your thoughts on the team and your prospects as you head to the WAC tournament?
DS: I think first of all the WAC race was interesting for us this year. Going into it we were picked fifth and sixth in the coaches and media polls. We've got a new team heading into this year, a couple transfers, kids who hadn't played in a year and trying to mix a new group together and had a pretty good first semester and so our expectations and hopes were pretty high going into the WAC season. I think we rode this group really hard first semester and came away with some big wins and I think sometimes with a new and inexperienced group it kind of wears on you once you get into second semester.

Plus those other teams in our league, the WAC was good this year. It was the 12th ranked RPI league in Division I this year. We didn't pull out some wins that we probably could have, I won't say we should have, we beat the bottom end teams and the teams ahead of us beat us. We had chances to beat Nevada twice and chances to beat Idaho twice. I think finishing fourth is a good position for us. Going in every year we're always looking up at Fresno, La. Tech, Nevada and Boise to begin with, we took care of Boise but Idaho has a good team. They're much much better than what their record might indicate.   Continue Reading This Post >>

Written By: WAC Media Relations

DENVER, CO - New Mexico State third baseman Wade Reynoso and Hawai‘i pitcher Josh Slaats have been named the Verizon Wireless Western Athletic Conference Baseball Hitter and Pitcher of the Week, respectively, for March 1-7

Reynoso, a senior from Redwood City, Calif. (Sequoia HS), helped New Mexico State to a 4-2 record last week. Reynoso batted .522 and registered a 1.000 slugging percentage over the six games. He went 12-for-23 at the plate with 16 RBI, 11 runs scored, four walks, two doubles and three home runs. In a win over New Mexico, Reynoso recorded a season-high six at bats, a season-high four hits and a season-high six RBI in a 17-8 victory.   Continue Reading This Post >>

Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

NEW ORLEANS, LA - The New Mexico State men's and women's cross country teams have earned All-Academic Team honors announced by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTRCCCA) Monday, March 8. The women's team tallied a 3.31 cumulative grade point average after the fall 2009 semester, while the men's team had a cumulative grade point average of 3.5.

"Our student-athletes know that their job here at New Mexico State is to get their degrees," men's and women's cross country coach Paul Harkins said. "Being an athlete is a great opportunity for a lot of them but when they come to college getting a degree is priority number one. Both teams are doing a great job, working hard on both the course and the classroom and these two awards prove that."  Continue Reading This Post >>

The Aggie baseball team fell 35-16 on Sunday to St. Joseph's in a game that saw the Aggies hit five home runs. The Aggies used nine different pitchers, none of them pitching more than two innings. The 51 combined runs were just three shy of the all-time record of 54 which was set by the Aggies and Nevada in a 38-16 loss by the Aggies all the way back in 1999. There were a whopping 126 runs scored by both teams in this series and the first and final games saw the winner score 30-plus runs.

The Aggies return to action tomorrow when they face New Mexico in Albuquerque in a two-game series with game two taking place Wednesday.

The Aggie men's and women's basketball team brought home a few accolades yesterday afternoon as the All-WAC teams were announced. The Aggie men's basketball team saw Jahmar Young earn First Team honors, Jonathan Gibson earn Second Team honors and Wendell McKines earn Honorable Mention. On the women's side Crystal Boyd earned Second Team honors and Camila Rosen earned All-Freshman honors.

The Aggie women will take the court on Wednesday afternoon against Idaho as they hope to win their first WAC title. The Aggies are much better than their 8-8 conference record indicates as they were probably about 30 seconds or less of game time from being 10-6 in conference play as they suffered last second losses on the road against Idaho and twice against Nevada and another three minutes of game time from being 12-4 in conference as they held late game leads over those same two teams at home before losing.

The men's team will play in the final game on Thursday against San Jose State. The Spartans lost eight of their final 10 games but are still a very dangerous team and also much better than their 6-10 record indicates. The main concern for the men heading into the tournament this week is defense. The Aggies' interior defense was exposed twice this past week as Nevada had their way scoring at will inside in a game that was reminiscent of last season's home finale against Boise State (from a defensive perspective). Then on Saturday Utah State similarly was able to score inside just about whenever they wanted in the first half and then when the UtAgs got hot in the second half from outside, combined with NM State's struggles offensively, it was game over.

Fatigue is also a bit of a concern as the winner of the tournament has to win three games in four days and in the second half of the last three games the Aggies have given up 54, 59 and 47 points (H/T to Jason Groves of the Las Cruces Sun-News for that stat). Since that outstanding defensive performance against Idaho at home in which they held the Vandals to just 30 percent shooting, the Aggies have given up 92, 100 and 81 points and in each of those three games a player from the opposing team either had a career-high (Robert Arnold's 35 points and Brandon Fields' 32 points) or season high (Tai Wesley's 24 points) scoring night. The Aggies will need to shore up that defense if they want to win the title this week.

On to today's links...  Continue Reading This Post >>

The New Mexico State softball team wrapped up its trip to Las Vegas with a 3-2 victory over Portland State on Sunday morning. The Aggies improved to 12-8 overall and finished the weekend 3-2 at the tournament, tied with host UNLV for second behind No. 13/15 Cal who finished the tournament 5-0.

The Aggies fell behind 2-0 after two innings as Portland State's DeChauna Skinner led off the inning with a double off of starter Carissa Theis. Alexa Morales followed with a single and she advanced to third on an errant throw by the Aggies which also scored Skinner from second. The third batter of the inning, Carly McEachran singled up the middle putting runners at the corners. McEachran stole then second base but Theis struck out the next PSU batter. Following another Viking out, Morales scored from third on a wild pitch by Theis. After giving up a walk to put runners at the corners, Theis got Brandi Scroggins to ground out to second base.  Continue Reading This Post >>