We were only half right on yesterday's WAC Player of the Week predictions, luckily we were right when it came to Yollie McMillion. She was named the WAC's Offensive Player of the Week for her four goal performance this past weekend in the Aggies' first home soccer tournament.

McMillion (who we're still searching for a cool nickname for given her penchant for scoring game-changing goals), not only leads her team in goals with five, but leads the league in goals with five, three more than teammates Heather Goldberg and Baili Foutz (who each scored two against Prairie View A&M and are now tied for second in the league) and a host of other with two goals. She also leads the league in points (players get two points for a goal, one for an assists) with 10, that's twice as many points and the next player on the list.

The Aggies will have their work cut out for them this weekend as they take on New Mexico and Northern Arizona, both very strong programs and both teams that will defend the goal a little better than Prairie View A&M did.

Aggie volleyball opens up the home schedule tomorrow night against CSU-Bakersfield. We'll Ellen Miks' latest entry in her Aggie Volleyball Diary posted later today.

We also have a new challenge for Aggie volleyball fans. The Aggies have been in the Top 15 in attendance with regularity over the past few seasons, however, after the first weekend of NCAA volleyball our rival, UNM, is THIRD in the nation in home attendance. The Lobos packed Johnson Gym this past weekend averaging 2,371 fans per match including 3,831 fans against Stanford on Sunday.

So, our challenge to you Aggie fans is to get your butts out to the Pan Am tomorrow night and Saturday night (and for the rest of the season) and show everyone which school has the best volleyball fans in the state of New Mexico.

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The Aggie soccer team trounced Prairie View A&M on Sunday afternoon scoring a school record eight goals. Among the eight goals was a hat trick by sophomore forward Yolanda McMillion who now has a team-high five goals through three games this season. McMillion should get serious consideration for WAC Offensive Player of the Week as she scored four goals this weekend, including the game winner against Jacksonville State on Friday evening.

Be sure to check out the photos from yesterday's game as well.

Up next for the Aggies is their first trip to Albuquerque to face in-state rival New Mexico. The Lobos are 3-0-1 on the season and defeated No. 23 Marquette yesterday and could be ranked when the Aggies travel to the UNM Soccer Complex on Friday. The Aggies and Lobos have one common opponent this season and that is Montana. The Lobos destroyed the Grizzlies 7-0 in their season opener while the Aggies tied Montana 1-1 in double overtime.

The Aggie volleyball team heads into week two of their season as this week they'll host Cal State-Bakersfield and I-10 rival UTEP. The Roadrunners are 0-3 on the season losing to former Aggie assistants Phil McDaniel (Drake University) and Ashley Hardee (University of North Dakota) in 3-0 sweeps and then battling but losing a five-set match to Gonzaga at the UND Tournament this past weekend.

Kayleigh Giddens had a very strong open to the season posting matches of 18, 14 and 19 kills. Her 19 kill effort on Saturday against Florida A&M was one of, if not the best performance she's had offensively as an Aggie as she finished the match hitting .536. Her performance will get her consideration for WAC Hitter of the Week but we suspect that honor will go to Kanani Danielson of Hawai'i whose team won their opening tournament. Danielson finished the weekend with 52 kills and 35 digs and hit .316, .394 and .369 in her three matches.

Overall it was a good opening weekend for WAC volleyball. No. 5 Hawai'i had wins over No. 22 San Diego and No. 16 UCLA, the Aggies notched victories over Florida International and Florida A&M, Idaho swept Washington State and Utah State defeated Utah in Salt Lake City for the first time in 20 years.

And last but certainly not least. Welcome Back Football. The 2010 college football season gets underway this week and while the Aggies aren't in action (they open up on the 11th), Hawai'i and Idaho kick things off on Thursday night. The Warriors host USC and Idaho hosts North Dakota. The big game in the WAC's first week will take place next Monday night when Boise State travels to Washington D.C. to take on Virginia Tech and puts their national title hopes on the line.

The Aggies named team captains for the 2010 season and they are QB Matt Christian and DB Davon House.

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The Aggie volleyball team completed their first weekend of play with a sweep of Florida A&M on Saturday afternoon. The Aggies wrapped up the FSU Invitational with a 2-1 record, good enough for a second place finish in the tournament behind No. 15 Florida State's 3-0 record.

Kayleigh Giddens had a big match for the Aggies finishing with 19 kills and a whopping .536 hitting percentage. Kelsey Brennan also had a good day for the Aggies finishing with 10 kills and a .500 hitting percentage. A pair of freshmen, Desiree Scott and Rocio Gutierrez combined for nine kills, Scott with five and Gutierrez with four.

The Aggies hit .386 as a team while holding FAMU to .060. We were reminded by Kyle Doperalski, Aggie play-by-play man for the volleyball team, that this is a Florida A&M program that went into Lincoln, NE in 2004 and stopped the Huskers' lengthy home winning streak which is no small feat. The Huskers didn't lose again at home until 2009. The Aggies' two victories this weekend, despite not coming against common household name teams in Florida International and Florida A&M, were two solid victories to start off the season with.

The Aggies return to action on Wednesday night when they open up the home slate against Cal State-Bakersfield.

On a volleyball related note, the battle of former Aggie volleyball assistants went Phil McDaniel and Drake as they defeated Ashley Hardee and the North Dakota Fighting Sioux on Saturday night in five sets to win the North Dakota Classic. Hardee and the Sioux will get a chance to return the favor when they travel to Des Moines, IA to take on Drake in their home tournament.

The Aggie soccer team is back in action today as they take the field against Prairie View A&M. The Aggies will be looking to improve to 2-0-1 today. Prairie View lost 6-0 to North Texas on Friday afternoon to fall to 0-2-1 and will be looking to notch their first victory of the season.

Today's match is set for a 1:30 p.m. MT start can be heard on the radio in Las Cruces on KSNM AM 570 with Kyle Doperalski calling the action. Streaming audio and video will also be available via Aggie Access (subscription required).

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The Aggie volleyball team split a pair of matches in the FSU Invite on Friday afternoon defeating a very good Florida International team 3-1 before falling 3-1 to No. 15 Florida State.

The Aggies' best play during the two matches came in set three against Florida International and set two against Florida State. The Aggies hit .368 in the third set against the Panthers, "We played a really efficient game three, very few errors there and we saw glimpses of how good we're going to be down the road," said Coach Jordan. In the match against Florida State the Aggies had a lot of trouble passing serve receive except for the second set, which not coincidentally, they won. ""[The difference in passing] It's confidence. FSU didn't really do anything different at the service line," said Coach Jordan. "They hit a ton of great serves. Five of their six servers hit great serves. We got on a roll and got some confidence going for a while and it was great."

"I'm confident we'll learn from it, I've got confidence in this group that they'll make the adjustments they need to make and part of it is not making mistakes in bunches, being a little bit tougher and bouncing back from mistakes better," said Coach Jordan. "The one game we passed pretty well [second set], we wound up winning it. We were in it competing the whole time but the rest of the time they out-served us and out-passed us and put a ton of pressure on it."

In the fourth set against Florida State, in which they fell 25-10, Coach Jordan was able to get some other players some playing time which he believes will benefit the team in the long run. "Just to get them some experience was good. Twelve of our thirteen players saw action and I think we're going to benefit from playing a great time like this. Losing in four is not fun but they're a great team and we've just got to improve."

The Aggies will take on Florida A&M today at 3:00 p.m. MT. "I expect them to be a foreign loaded team, they win their conference every year and we're playing them on their home court. They're going to be tough." Florida A&M lost in four sets to Florida International last night winning set one 31-29 before losing the final three 25-18, 25-16 and 25-15.

We're not sure about live stats for today's game when we find out, we'll post the link on Twitter @AgsBleedCrimson

The Aggie soccer team broke the seal on the win column just two matches into the season as they came from behind to defeat Jacksonville State last night at Aggie Memorial Stadium. The Aggies allowed a goal in the second minute but then shut out the Gamecocks over the final 88 minutes of play. Head coach Michael Needham was really excited about his team's play (outside the incredibly early goal). "We played the best soccer we've played as a program to this point and that's exciting," said Coach Needham. He was also impressed by the play on the field by both teams. "The soccer was pretty good. There was some creative flair through the whole game."

He was also happy to get the first victory this early in the season (the Aggies also got in the win column early last year winning their fourth match). "We're 1-0-1 right now and I'm happy with that," said Coach Needham. "I think we had good chances against Montana but I also think Montana had good chances against us. I think 1-1 was a fair result. I'm very happy with where we're at. We've got to take care of it on Sunday and try get ourselves to 2-0-1 going into UNM."

Coach Needham also mentioned that he will try to get true freshman goal keeper Erin Wosick some playing time in the next couple matches, "It's going to be important that we have two [goalkeepers] that can go if need be."

One of the other aspects of the team that Coach Needham has been happy with is his team's depth. "We're deeper and I didn't even get to use our depth tonight. Sunday [against Montana] I think we went 17 or 18 deep and tonight we only went 16 deep. We've got to get more players more minutes but at the same time my job is to make sure I put players in in situations where they can succeed," said Coach Needham. "We've got a bunch of players who are real capable of getting the job done and I look forward to seeing each one of them." One of those players who really impressed coach Needham last night was sophomore defender Megan Hendler who transferred in from the University of Dubuque (IA). "Tonight Megan was big-time for us. She was really good. She was one who came on as an outside back and went on and played forward for us and I thought was pretty good tonight."

The Aggies will wrap up the home tournament with a match against Prairie View A&M on Sunday afternoon.

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It's just under an half an hour until the Aggie volleyball team will take the court for the first time in the 2010 season. New Mexico State plays Florida International at 10:00 a.m. MT at the FSU Invitational. They'll be facing Florida State later today at 5:00 p.m. MT.

FIU's setter, Natalia Valentin, was named the Sun Belt Preseason Player of the Year yesterday and today's match will showcase two very very good setters with Preseason All-Conference setter Jennah DeVries manning the duties for the Aggies. Valentin averaged 11.87 assists per set last season.

Offensively, FIU's main weapon is FIU sophomore outside hitter Jovana Bjelica who was also named to the All-Sun Belt Conference Preseason squad and was named the Sun Belt Freshman of the Year last season. Bjelica averaged 3.34 kills per set last season which was second most on the team and she hit .261. She also averaged 2.42 digs per set.

As a team FIU hit .254 last season while holding opponents to a .180 hitting percentage. FIU's setter, Valentin, was also the leader in digs per set at 2.93.

There are no live stats available for this morning's game versus FIU but we spoke with the NMSU SID who is with the Aggies and they are hoping to tweet some scoring updates on their twitter page @NMStateAggies and we'll retweet those updates on our page @AgsBleedCrimson.

Tonight's match against No. 15 Florida State will have live stats and will also be streamed online via Seminoles.com All-Access (subscription required).

The Aggie soccer team returns to the pitch tonight as they face Jacksonville State. We promised an interview with Coach Needham but his schedule did not allow us to connect yesterday.

This is the first home tournament in the Aggie soccer program's history. Jacksonville State is 0-2 on the season after posting a pair of losses last weekend losing 2-0 to Gardner-Webb and 3-2 to Georgia State in double overtime.

The Aggies are 0-0-1 after tying Montana 1-1 last weekend. Yolanda McMillion has scored the lone goal for the Aggies this season while Mikaela Bitner has been pretty solid at goalkeeper for the Aggies.

Tonight's match is set for a 6:00 p.m. start with streaming video available via Aggie Access (subscription required).

Finally, The Sporting News has released their 2010-11 Preseason Polls and they've picked New Mexico State to finish second behind Utah State. They also named Wendell McKines and Troy Gillenwater to their Preseason All-WAC teams. (H/T Parsing The WAC and Jon Wilner/Mercury News)

Jason Groves of the Las Cruces Sun-News reports on his blog that Remi Barry has enrolled at NM State.

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The Aggie Volleyball team left this morning for Tallahassee where they'll open up the season tomorrow at noon ET against Florida International. The team was scheduled to leave the Pan Am Center around 4:00 a.m. this morning (in case you thought traveling was all fun and games!)

Be sure to check out this week's interview with head coach Mike Jordan as well as Ellen Miks' second entry in her Aggie Volleyball Diary.

Also good news for Aggie volleyball fans is that all AggieVision produced matches will be streamed on ESPN3.com this season. This is a huge deal for AggieVision and Aggie volleyball. There isn't a lot of non-football/baseball/basketball content at the college level that is streamed on ESPN3.com so for Aggie volleyball to have their televised matches also streamed on ESPN3.com is a huge huge coup for them and the guys at AggieVision.

And speaking of streaming online matches, the Aggies' match against Florida State tomorrow night will be streamed on the Seminoles.com All-Access site (subscription required). The Aggies' match versus Florida State is just one of five matches that FSU is streaming live this season.

The Aggie soccer team is getting ready to kick off their first home tournament tomorrow. We'll be talking with Coach Needham later today and we'll have that interview posted this afternoon so be sure to come back and check for that.

Lost in the conference shuffle/rearrangement is the impact on the Olympic sports in the WAC. Dave at The WAC Softball Blog took a look at the top 15 regular season crowds last season and two of the Aggies' games against Fresno State, both in Fresno, were among the top five. The second largest crowd of 1,700 was April 24th meeting (likely a combined attendance for the doubleheader) which the Aggies lost 7-6 and 3-1 and the fourth largest crowd last season was the Aggies' game the previous day against Fresno State which they lost 4-3 in extra innings. The Fresno State vs. New Mexico State has been a budding rivalry and has produced some of the most exciting games in WAC play and it will be a shame to lose those games after Fresno State leaves to join the Mountain West after the 2012 season.

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Be sure to check out the latest entry in Ellen Miks' Aggie Volleyball Diary. Ellen shares a couple of humorous stories from Aggie practice in this week's entry.

Also be sure to check out this week's interview with Aggie head volleyball coach Mike Jordan in case you missed it yesterday.

The big news of the day came from Aggie football as head coach DeWayne Walker named Matt Christian as the Aggies' starting quarterback. Christian transfered from Palomar Junior College.

The Aggies open up the 2010 season on September 11th at home against San Diego State.

KRWG has a pair of e-mails sent to NMSU faculty and staff yesterday by Dr. Boston and President Couture.

Also, the Salt Lake Tribune has obtained the text of the resolution that was passed on August 13th (the one that has the $5 million buyout clause).

Video of a potential Aggie recruit after the jump...

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The Aggie volleyball team is just a few days away from kicking off their 2010 season. We spoke with head coach Mike Jordan in this week's interview about the alumni weekend and got his thoughts about the club as they look towards Friday's season opener against Florida International.

This weekend's tournament will be an opportunity for the Aggies to notch some RPI boosting victories, which was something that plagued the team last season until their victory over Colorado State at the end of the season. As Coach Jordan mentioned in the interview, all three teams were the 2009 conference champions in their respective conferences and thus all three made NCAA Tournament appearances last season. Florida State advanced to the Elite Eight, Florida A&M lost a very close five set match to Jacksonville State and Florida International was swept by Florida in the first round.

One interesting item from this past weekend was that the Florida State team also held an alumni match and their alumni defeated the 2010 team 4-1. It should be noted that all five sets were played to just 15 points but nonetheless, it's seems to be a rare occurrence when an alumni squad defeats the regular squad.

We haven't discussed the realignment issue in a few days, partially because nothing new has happened other than Utah State admitting that they turned down a Mountain West invitation and Hawai'i acknowledging that they have contacted the Big West.

Jared Eborn of the Deseret News was able to get a hold of a draft of the agreement between BYU and the WAC that had been drawn up prior to Fresno State and Nevada's departure. Of note in the agreement was the added television exposure via BYUTV for the non-football sports.

"BYU commits to televising via its cable network the following WAC events: all matches of the WAC volleyball tournament not televised by ESPN, all games of the WAC men's and women's basketball tournaments not televised by ESPN, all games of the WAC baseball tournament and softball tournament," the agreement stated. "BYU will have the rights to televise any other WAC championship events that is wishes, along with any other regular-season events when permissible per the ESPN contract."

But, unfortunately it did not happen (and appears very unlikely to happen now that Fresno State and Nevada are in the Mountain West starting in 2012).

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The Aggie women's soccer team got a second chance to officially kicked off the 2010 season and they did so earning a tie against Montana. The Aggies went down 1-0 in the 11th minute when Montana's Kaitlyn Heinsohn scored an unassisted goal. The Aggies would go into halftime trailing 1-0 but came out in the second half and put together an aggressive half. For all the talk that we've done about the new players for the Aggies, in the end it was a pair of familiar faces who came through for the team. In the 68th minute, Crystal Burns delivered a ball to Yollie McMillion who was able to put it in the back of the net. It was a role familiar to both players as Burns tied for the team lead in assists last season and McMillion developed the reputation for being clutch with all three of her goals last season being game winners.

McMillion nearly delivered a golden goal at the end of the first overtime but her header hit the crossbar. Montana raced down the field and nearly had a golden goal of their own but a great save by redshirt freshman Mikaela Bitner, the second one of the overtime period, sent the game to double overtime.

To illustrate just how aggressive the Aggies were in the second half and overtime periods, Montana had outshot the Aggies 7-3 in the first half. In the second half and both overtime periods, the Aggies outshot the Grizzlies 15-6.

Up next for the Aggies is another first, their first home tournament as they host Jacksonville State and Prairie View A&M on Friday and Sunday.

Be sure to check out the photos from yesterday's game as well.

The Aggie volleyball team also gets their season underway this weekend as they open up on the road in Tallahassee, FL on Friday at 10:00 a.m. MT against defending Sun Belt champion Florida International. Later in the day the Aggies will take on No. 15 Florida State at 5:00 p.m. MT.

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The Aggie volleyball team swept the alumni 3-0 last night but needed to come from behind to do so. Be sure to check out the photos from last night's match.

The Aggie soccer team is back in action today at 6:00 p.m. at Aggie Memorial Stadium when they attempt to officially kick off the soccer season. The Aggies' opponent today, Montana, played in Albuquerque on Friday night and got drilled by the Lobos 7-0, it was 3-0 within the first 22 minutes of the match.

As you know, the Aggies' season opener against UTEP was cancelled due to bad weather so they haven't officially played a match yet. However, the Montana match tonight provides sort of a "do-over" for the Aggies. They know some of what they needed to work on from Friday night's first half and we expect that the Aggies will come out ready again tonight.

The match can be heard on KSNM AM 570 with Kyle Doperalski calling the exciting action. The match can also be heard online via Aggie Access (subscription required) with streaming video also available.

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