C.J. Noland leading by example as Lobos settling into their roles midway through season

As the Lobos turn the page on 2024 with one final game Tuesday night in Fresno, California, it appears as if they are feeling pretty confident about where they will be starting 2025.

While the team did return more points (46.6%) from last year’s roster than any non-Air Force team in the Mountain West and more minutes (49.8%) than any team other than Nevada and Air Force, the reality is there were three very (that may be an understatement) distinct pieces to the puzzle that left in Jaelen House, Jamal Mashburn Jr. and J.T. Toppin.

They were great Lobos, but also unique in how players around them had to adjust to what those guys did on the court game in and game out.

So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the first two months of the season for the Lobos (10-3, 2-0 Mountain West) had a feeling-out process and some things to figure out with the roster.

But as the calendar closes on December, the Lobos might just be onto something.

“I would just say we were flowing better. I would say we’re getting more used to each other on offense,” senior guard C.J. Noland told the Journal on Saturday after a 76-68 road win at Colorado State. “I think that players are getting comfortable and knowing what they’re doing, where their shots are coming from, and I think we just had a good flow of that.”

Noland, specifically, deserves a lot of the credit for being so flexible in the team’s tinkering with lineups and finding good player combinations.

The senior guard, who was voted a team tri-captain before ever playing a game as a Lobo, probably didn’t envision coming to UNM to not start. And it can be argued that over the first two months, he’s certainly deserving of being a starter.

But he’s gone from backup “3” to start the season to starting “3” to starting “2” for one game and now he’s a backup “2”.

But, at least publicly, he says he’s more than happy to be playing a key role in any way he can, even if that is, for now, as a much-needed spark off the bench that, often times, is still playing closer minutes down the stretch.

“My main goal from the beginning was just the win. I just want to win with the team,” Noland said. “As long as we get the win, that’s it. So that’s all that matters to me.”

CHANGING OF THE GUARD: As they are in last place and in the first season of a new coach, it isn’t surprising some things associated with this edition of the Fresno State Bulldogs have flown under the radar.

But this one seems like it should have got a little more attention.

Leading scorer Amar Augillard, a 6-foot-5, 220-pound bulldog himself of a guard from Zion, Illinois, who was the NJCAA Division I National Player of the Year last season, is no longer on the team.

After the team’s Dec. 21 loss to Cal-Baptist, Fresno State coach Vance Walberg announced that Augillard and the coach talked before that game and a mutual decision for them to “part ways” was agreed upon.

“When you bring in players, you hope things always work out,” Walberg said in a postgame news conference, as posted to X by Alec Nolan of ABC 30 in Fresno.

“You want the best for them and the best for us. If you watch the previous games, you can see Amar’s attitude coming out a lot of times, his head would go down, and so forth. So, we talked quite a bit about that. He’s a competitor. It just wasn’t working out. There’s several things we talked about which I won’t go over here, personally. It just wasn’t going to work out. .. He wasn’t feeling the right vibes here, and we just decided to part ways.”

Augillard has one more season of eligibility and is in the transfer portal.

COMING UP: Friday’s game in the Pit vs. Nevada is Lobo men’s basketball game No. 1,000 to be played in the iconic arena.