Lobos release full, beefed-up nonconference schedule. But is it the toughest ever?

The UNM Lobo men’s basketball team Tuesday unveiled what appears to be one of the more ambitious and challenging nonconference schedules that the notoriously weak-scheduling program has ever had.

Seven of the 10 Division I teams on UNM’s 11-game nonconference schedule have played in the NCAA Tournament in one or both of the past two seasons.

With a road game in Madison Square Garden against St. John’s, neutral court games against UCLA, Arizona State and either USC or Saint Mary’s and home games including Virginia Commonwealth and rival New Mexico State (but not in Las Cruces this year) all before the first season of a 20-game Mountain West schedule (previous years had an 18-game MW schedule), the Lobos shouldn’t have to worry about their schedule strength being the issue come NCAA Tournament time.

“I think it’ll be the hardest nonconference schedule that Lobo basketball (has ever had),” UNM coach Richard Pitino said in a media scrum after a practice earlier this month, before joking that the Journal “checked” him on that statement and questions if it is actually the toughest schedule.

“It’ll certainly be the top two or three. You never know when you schedule. You didn’t know JT (Toppin, the MW Freshman of the Year who transferred to Texas Tech) was leaving until the last day. You don’t know what the other rosters have. UCLA loaded up. St. John’s loaded up. VCU got their best player back. So that’s the fun in it. But certainly, we will be challenged, our fans will be engaged very early in the process.”

The Lobos went 26-10 this past season and were ranked No. 22 in the NCAA’s NET rankings and were the first team to win four games in four days to win the Mountain West Tournament in a year the league sent six teams to the Big Dance.

But on Selection Sunday, the committee announced the Lobos wouldn’t have made it into the NCAA Tournament had they not earned the league’s automatic berth, suggesting the league didn’t do much in nonconference play.

This offseason, in an effort to better the selection process, the committee added two metrics criteria to consider: the Bart Torvik rankings (UNM ranked 29th this past season, second in the MWC) and Wins Above Bubble, a metric essentially built to gauge how a team does against what a theoretical “bubble” team should do against their schedule (UNM ranked 33rd last season, fourth in the MWC).

The best?

The Lobos reputation for weak nonconference scheduling is largely accurate — due in part to good teams genuinely having little to gain by playing in the Pit and the fact that the Lobos must play a large number of home games to generate large ticket revenue for a school that has never been able to rely on football to do so.

UNM’s nonconference strength of schedule this past season was 83rd, seventh best in the MWC, according to TeamRankings.com. Its last two NCAA Tournament seasons before 2024, the team ranked 27th (2014) and 36th (2013) in that stat.

But it was way back in the 1987-88 season when the program appears to have played its most challenging nonconference schedule.

That season — the last in the Gary Colson caching era — UNM played UCLA, Seton Hall and Iowa State in the Preseason NIT; played NMSU twice; played at Washington, at Texas, vs. No. 1 Arizona (a Lobos win in the Pit) and at No. 4 Oklahoma, a Sooners team that lost in the National Championship game to the “Danny and the Miracles” Kansas Jayhawks.

Miners details

UNM will also be hosting UTEP in an Oct. 28 exhibition in the Pit — a game that needed special NCAA approval to make happen.

Division I teams are allowed two preseason contests which can be either a closed-door scrimmage against a D-I opponent or an open exhibition game against a non-D-I opponent.

The Lobos and Miners, both D-I programs, are being allowed to play an open exhibition game since proceeds will go to a charity — UNM Children’s Hospital.

There is no return game according to the contract and UNM will pay UTEP $15,000 to cover travel expenses.

UNM will play a closed scrimmage in its other preseason contest, though the opponent is not yet known.