Wright: There are just too few Fews out there

The New Mexico Lobos need a Few. Just a Few, that’s all.

Problem is, there’s only one of those. He resides in Spokane, Washington, and he isn’t going anywhere. Never has, probably never will.

Still, as UNM searches for its seventh men’s basketball head coach in the past 26 years, we can at least wonder. And dream.

Is there a coach out there who can win often enough and big enough to keep his job, yet spurn the money and opportunity offered elsewhere that successful mid-major coaches are guaranteed to get?

In 1999, Mark Few was hired as the men’s basketball coach at Gonzaga University in Spokane. He’s still there.

Over the course of his tenure, the Bulldogs/Zags have won 22 regular-season conference titles and 20 conference tournament titles. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament every year there was one (the tournament was not contested in 2020 due to the pandemic). They’ve made it to the Sweet 16 nine times, the Elite Eight three times. Twice, they’ve played for the national title.

Over that same span, really, the New Mexico Lobos haven’t done terribly: four regular-season conference titles, five league tournament titles, seven NCAA Tournament berths. Lots of college programs would love to have those numbers.

What there has not been at New Mexico is the unbroken string of success we’ve seen at Gonzaga— the kind of success that comes with continuity and stability.

There just aren’t a lot of Mark Fews out there.

Few, while not a Gonzaga alum, grew up down the road in Oregon. Before he got the head-coaching job, he’d been a Bulldogs assistant for a decade. It’s fair to note, for these purposes, that he inherited a program that hadn’t had a losing season since 1990.

It still hasn’t.

Few has been handsomely paid at Gonzaga, a private school not required to disclose salary figures. It was reported in 2013 that he was making slightly more than $1 million at the time. This past season, he reportedly was making a bit more than $2.7 million.

Without question, he could have made far more at any of the Power 5 conference schools that have approached him over the years.

But, no. He didn’t mess with happy. Dan Monson messed with happy.

Monson, Few’s predecessor at Gonzaga, left for Minnesota for more money and a bigger stage after two highly successful seasons with the Zags. Seven games into his eighth year Minnesota, he resigned having compiled a 118-116 record, 44-68 in the Big Ten.

After 17 seasons at Long Beach State (275-273), Monson just completed his first season at Eastern Washington (10-22).

Could Monson have sustained the kind of success at Gonzaga that Few has had? Could Few have had the kind of success at a Power 5 school that he’s had at Gonzaga?

We’ll never know, and neither will they.

Steve Alford messed with happy after saying he wouldn’t. After taking the Lobos to three Mountain West regular-season championships, three MW Tournament titles and three NCAA Tournament berths in six years, he left for UCLA.

Alford’s post-Lobo career has been far more successful than Monson’s post-Bulldog résumé, having taken the Bruins to four NCAA Tournaments in six years. But, as he explained to Albuquerque when he left: Hey, it’s UCLA. Four NCAAs in six years weren’t gonna cut it.

After losing to Liberty — coached by his UNM predecessor, Ritchie McKay — 13 games into his seventh season in Westwood, Alford was fired.

Alford is 112-73 in six seasons at Nevada, UNM’s MW rival, with two NCAA berths. It’s rumored he’d be interested in returning to Albuquerque.

Whether he’d mess with happy a second time, assuming he could recapture the success he had here from 2007-13, we don’t know. Neither does he.

Earlier this week, UNM lost a coach who, based on the information available, might well have approached Few-like status had he stayed for years to come. But, with Richard Pitino, this wasn’t about messing with happy. He clearly wasn’t Mark Few. Thank you, goodbye and good luck. On to Xavier and bigger things.

If there’s a Mark Few out there, James Borrego and Cody Toppert, Albuquerque natives both, seem the most likely candidates to stay with UNM beyond Alford’s six years — the longest tenure of any UNM coach since Few took over at Gonzaga. (The Journal’s Geoff Grammer, however, reported Friday night that Borrego had withdrawn his name from consideration.)

Winning, though, is the thing.

Had McKay kept winning after his 2004-05 Danny Granger-led Lobos won the MW Tournament and made the Big Dance, would he have stayed for years to come? He didn’t, and got fired after five years, so we’ll never know. The same goes for Fran Fraschilla (three years), Craig Neal (four), and Paul Weir (four).

Win, move on. Lose, get fired.

Winning, fannies in seats, filling the coffers, must be UNM Athletic Director Fernando Lovo’s priority in finding the school’s next men’s basketball coach.

Finding a Mark Few, a winner who’ll stay and keep winning, and stay and keep winning, is probably too much to ask.

But, oh, my. Wouldn’t it be nice?