Aggie head basketball coach Marvin Menzies announced yesterday that junior guard Jahmar Young will not return next season as he is electing to hire an agent and pursue his professional career. It's a decision that according to Young was influenced by his alleged altercation with a peace officer this past weekend. Redshirt freshman Jacoby Patton also paid the price for his participation in the alleged incident as he was dismissed from the team "indefinitely" according to the press release put out by the NM State media relations department.

Jahmar finishes his career at New Mexico State with 1,479 points, seventh on the all-time scoring list. A list that Jahmar Young would have no doubt topped by the end of his final season next year needing only 384 points to surpass Eric Channing's mark. This season he finished with 689 points, the second all-time for a single season in Aggie history trailing only Aggie legend and NM State Ring of Honor and Hall of Famer Jimmy Collins who scored 754 in the 1969-1970 season. In fact, Jahmar Young owns two of the Top 10 most prolific scoring seasons in Aggie history as he finished with 573 points last season which is now 7th on the all-time single season scoring list.

His departure along with the graduation of Jonathan Gibson means that the Aggies will be losing their top two leading scorers from this year's NCAA squad.

Be sure to check out this week's interview with Aggie head coach Rocky Ward as he and the Aggies are set for an 11-day road trip to California. The Aggies will face San Jose State this weekend and Sacramento State next weekend.

One topic we discussed this week with Coach Ward was the scheduling that the Aggies have done to hopefully provide themselves an advantage during conference play frontloading the schedule so that as a result they aren't playing any midweek games during the conference schedule. Aside from the competitive advantage, Coach Ward was quick to point out that it's also done to help keep his kids in class as much as possible.

"I think the average everyday fan out there doesn't have any idea how hard we work, in particular in baseball, at making sure our kids are in class as much as we can and reducing the impact we have on them academically. We really work hard at it. We probably have more disagreements and arguments in the league on scheduling based on that fact. Not based on who has an advantage or disadvantage athletically, it's more about whose kids are gonna miss more class and that kind of stuff. We really work hard in baseball to keep that impact as low as we possibly can."

College baseball gets a bad wrap because they have traditionally had some of the lowest APR scores among all college sports, however, Coach Ward and the staff have done a fantastic job academically with their players. Each and every season there are several graduating seniors, many of his players are on the Academic All-WAC teams (13 players last season). Also last season Richard Stout was an Academic All-District honoree.

The Aggie baseball team is another group that is getting it done on the field and in the classrooms.

Take a quick moment and jump over to Twitter and add Aggie head football coach DeWayne Walker to the list of people you're following on Twitter. His page can be found by going to @dwalkerfootball

Finally, while the Aggie volleybal and soccer schedules have yet to be released, we do have a couple of dates of interest for Aggie fans to circle on their calendars. The Aggie soccer team will host UTEP on Friday, August 20th (match time still TBD) and the volleyball team will host Hawai'i on Friday, October 1st at 7:00 p.m. MT.

On to today's links...

Aggie Men's Basketball
Teddy Feinberg of the Las Cruces Sun-News talks about Jahmar Young's decision to forgo his senior season.

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