The New Mexico State baseball team dropped a 7-2 decision to Virginia Military Institute on Friday afternoon in Corvallis, Ore. The Aggies trailed the Keydets 3-2 heading to the bottom of the eighth inning but VMI would plate four runs to push their lead to 7-2.

Trey Ross took his first loss this season as he threw six innings giving up two runs

Playing as the visiting team the Aggies would strike first in the top of the fourth inning as Kurt Snowley would draw a one out walk and later advance to third on a single from Ty Forney. Wes Starkes would bring Snowley home on a fielder's choice. The Keydets would answer the Aggies' run in the bottom of the fifth as leadoff hitter Chase Worthington would triple to lead off the inning. He would come across to score on an RBI single from Jordan Tarsovich. The Aggies would get out of the inning without any further damage to keep the score tied 1-1.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The Aggie men's basketball team will take on 2-seed Boise State tonight on ESPN2 after rallying to defeat 6-seed Nevada yesterday afternoon in the quarterfinals of the WAC tournament. The Aggies got a huge game from Gordo Castillo who went 10-for-10 from the free throw line and his baseline drive resulting in a three point play was the pivotal play of the game as it gave the Aggies a three point lead that they would not relinquish.

The Aggie defense played very well and the Aggies rebounded the ball reasonably well also, two things that the Aggies have struggled with this season. The Aggies' transition defense was also much much better than it has been for much of the season. We can't remember really any egregious transition buckets by the Wolf Pack.

Tonight's game with Boise State should be a shootout. The average final score of the past nine games is just north of 92-85. The Aggies and Broncos have met three times in the WAC tournament with the Aggies holding a 2-1 advantage, though, that one loss to BSU came in a title game.

Tonight's game can be seen on ESPN2 with tipoff just prior to 10:00 p.m. (MT).

The Aggie women's team suffered a heartbreaking loss last night as they went from up eight at halftime to losing by five. The difference in the game came at the free throw line. That's not an excuse, that's simply the facts. Both teams made 15 field goals in the second half. Both teams made two three pointers in the second half. Utah State shot 22 free throws. New Mexico State shot eight. In fact, the Aggies shot eight the entire game. They did not shoot any in the first half while USU shot 10 in the first half and 32 for the game.

The difference in the game was those 14 extra free throws that Utah State took in the second half. Plain and simple.

There has been a lot of criticism of the officiating against New Mexico State this season. Against Idaho in Moscow, the Aggies never even got into the bonus in either half. The Vandals were called for a WAC record low five personal fouls.

On top of that, the officiating in this year's WAC tournament has been inconsistent. When an impartial play-by-play person (in this case the person doing the WAC video feed) is questioning the calls going against New Mexico State during the game you know something is amiss.

We tweeted last night during the game that the officiating was very inconsistent stating, "Refs in this game are not very consistent. USU hammering Aggies, no calls, NMSU brushing USU players and getting called for fouls."

We'll admit to being a little biased but it was pretty evident that the same stuff wasn't being called on both ends.

That being said, the Aggies had a chance to win down the stretch and simply couldn't hit shots when they needed to. There were a couple of turnovers, something which has been an achilles heel for the team, that were costly and as result, the Aggies' season ends with a 72-67 loss in the quarterfinals.

The Aggie baseball team is in Corvallis this weekend and they'll be taking on VMI and Oregon State today.

OSU is currently riding a seven game win streak. New Mexico State faces VMI at 2:00 p.m. (MT) and then faces the Beavers at 6:35 p.m. (MT).

Live Stats for the game against Oregon State will be available and we will provide periodic scoring updates via Twitter for both games.

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The New Mexico State women's basketball team's season ended in the WAC Tournament quarterfinals as they fell 72-67 to Utah State on Thursday night. The Aggies led Utah State by eight points at halftime but surrendered 52 second half points as the northern Aggies shot 60 percent from the field in the second half and attempted 22 free throws in the second half. The 22 second half foul shots by Utah State were part of a 32-8 advantage at the line for the northern Aggies on the night as USU hit 28-of-32 free throws while New Mexico State hit 7-of-8.

The Aggies fell behind early 5-0 but went on a 20-6 run over the next 10 minutes to take a 20-11 lead with 4:35 left to play in the first half. The Aggies would extend their lead to 24-14 after a layup from Jasmine Lowe but Utah State would trim the Aggies lead to six points. The Aggies would get a basket from Danisha Corbettt with 1:17 left in the half to go up 26-18 but a pair of free throws from Banna Diop would trip the lead back to six with 40 seconds left. Madison Spence would hit a jumper at the buzzer to send the Aggies into the halftime break up 28-20.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The New Mexico State men's basketball team rallied from a sluggish start to defeat 6-seed Nevada 66-60 and advance to the semifinals where they'll face 2-seed Boise State on Friday night.

The Aggies fell behind 9-0 early and did not lead in the game until three free throws from Gordo Castillo put the Aggies ahead 43-40 with 12:13 left to play. The Aggies would fall behind by five points with 5:22 left to play as Malik Story would strip the ball from Troy Gillenwater in the paint take it the distance for a layup and a three point play giving Nevada a 54-49 lead. The Aggies would go on an 8-0 run fueled by senior Gordo Castillo and Gillenwater as Castillo would make a pair of free throws and the Aggies would then get back-to-back three point plays from Gillenwater and Castillo putting the Aggies up 57-54 with 2:56 left to play.

The Aggies would extend the lead to five on a three pointer from Troy Gillwater from the top of the key off a feed from Christian Kabongo and the Aggies would sink all six free throws in the final 32 seconds to hold off the Wolf Pack.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: A good win over New Mexico on Tuesday night gives you the season sweep for the first time since 1995. You got a good outing from Dan Reid in the win.
Rocky Ward: Yeah he just had great command. He was all over the strike zone and they're a pretty aggressive team anyway. He was on a pitch count. I don't know what the final count was but somewhere around 80 and he was coming off of somewhat short rest. He had three days rest, it's not that tough to do but we initially had intended for him to throw Friday against Oregon State but both games against Oregon State are on Friday and Sunday and they're both at night. When we started talking about it, it really didn't matter if he started the Friday night or the Sunday night so we just rolled him back to Sunday. Last weekend we had really good performances out of Dan and Trey Ross but really below average performances out of Mack and Beck and as a result of that we used a lot of arms. We kind of looked at this game as a "piece it together" game. A couple innings a piece out of guys. I knew Dan was rested and I wanted the mature guy that I thought could get us into the game. I really didn't expect him to go six but I wanted three or four and we'd piece it together. He did a little better than that because of the short pitch innings.  Continue Reading This Post >>

Survive and advance. That's all that March is about. That's what the Aggie women's basketball team did last night as they defeated Hawai'i 71-59 to advance to the quarterfinals against Utah State this evening. Tonight's game is scheduled for a 9:30 p.m. (MT) tip-off and can be heard on KGRT 103.9 FM in Las Cruces tonight.

The Aggies overcame a 3-for-17 shooting start with pretty solid defense. The Aggies fell behind by nine points but went on a 20-4 run from the final two minutes of the first half through about the first four and a half minutes of the second half to go up by 11. The Wahine never got closer than eight in the second half and the Aggies never let the lead under double-digits in the final eight minutes.

The Aggies might not have been in the game had it not been for the first half play of Tabytha Wampler and Kaitlyn Soto. The pair of juniors scored 17 of the Aggies 27 points and Soto finished with 11 points which is six above her season average. Those are the type of things that have to happen for a team to go on a run.

Wampler was outstanding with 18 points and nine boards and Jasmine Lowe and Danisha Corbett were hot from deep. It's also a good sign that Madison Spence had a 1-for-11 shooting night and the Aggies still won. Spence might not have scored much but she was able to dish out seven assists and played a game-high 33 minutes.

The Aggies will face 3-seed Utah State in the final game of the day in Vegas. The Aggies and Aggies split the regular season series, each winning on their own home court. If New Mexico State can continue to play solid defense and continue to shoot as well as they did in the second half, they can definitely advance to the semifinals.

The Aggie men's team gets their title defense underway today at 3:30 p.m. (MT) as they take on 6-seed Nevada. The Wolf Pack blitzed Fresno State early hitting a season-high 12 three point shots. There's two ways to look at that. It's either a good thing meaning they got all those threes out of their system yesterday against the Bulldogs, or it's a bad thing and their shooters are getting hot in time for the WAC tournament.

We spoke with Coach Menzies yesterday evening to get his thoughts on facing the Wolf Pack and whether he noticed anything different about the Pack in their win yesterday.

"They were much more aggressive defensively today and they shot the ball well and they were deeper in terms of their scoring, they had a lot more guys contribute. They mixed up the defenses pretty much the same way they did against us. You can't change much in five days. They know what they're going to see and we know what we're going to see so we just have to go out and hopefully get the same verdict as we did at home in the Pan Am."

We also asked about the extra day of rest that the Aggies have gotten:

"I think the extra day was definitely a benefit. I won't know until we play the game if we come out successful then we can look back and say I'm glad we had the bye. Right now though it seems to be moving in the right direction. The guys are approaching it right now very business-like. I like their concentration and focus. The returning guys seem to be leading the way with their attention to detail and a sense of urgency in how their preparing. That's all positive. Good energy at practice and good concentration in the film sessions and we're optimistic about performing well tomorrow and looking forward to it."

We also asked about the status of Hamidu Rahman for tonight's game:

"He's still kind of status quo. If we can go to him or if we need to go to him we will. I'd rather not play him if I didn't have to."

The Aggies and Pack meet for the third time this season and the second time in less than a week. The game will be televised on ESPNU at 3:30 p.m. (MT) and expect it to be a war. The games between the Aggies and Wolf Pack are always intense and the games between the two in the conference tournament have been spectacularly entertaining. New Mexico State holds a 2-1 advantage over Nevada in the WAC Tournament. The Aggies lost in 2006 when the tournament was hosted in Reno. In that game the game got chippy and David Fisher was ejected for throwing a punch (it didn't land). The Aggies and Wolf Pack met two years later in the conference tournament in Las Cruces (2008) with Nevada playing as the higher seed. That game was also very intense but the Aggies came out victorious. And of course, who can forget last year's game in Reno when Jahar Young hit the game-winner with less than a couple seconds left on the clock.

Which Aggie team will show up? Which Wolf Pack team will show up? Hopefully both teams bring their 'A' games this afternoon.

The Aggie softball team notched a 1-0 victory over UTEP last night at the NM State Softball Complex to sweep the season series with the Miners. The Aggies got a solo homer from Vanessa Valles for the game's only run. Alex Newman pitched masterfully throwing a complete game 4-hit shutout and is now 12-1 on the season. The Aggies are off until next Tuesday when they host nationally ranked Arizona for a doubleheader.

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