May 29 – Twice was good, but now it’s one and over for the annual in-state rivalry between the UNM Lobos and the NMSU Aggies.
The schools agreed to play just once per season, as opposed to the home-and-home game — one game at the Pit in Albuquerque, one game at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces — which has been the format for most of the last 120 years. .
Although the contracts have not been finalized, the Journal confirmed that the school’s athletic directors — UNM’s Eddie Nuñez and NMSU’s Mario Moccia — and head coaches — UNM’s Richard Pitino and NMSU’s Jason Hooten — have agreed to the move.
The change has long been requested by coaches at both schools, but athletic directors and fans have been hesitant to make the change as both games are traditionally one of each program’s biggest box office draws.
The change, for now, will be for two years and will be reviewed by schools after the 2025-26 season, but it is expected to become the new norm.
The school agreed that the boys’ basketball game will be played at the school that will not host the state’s annual football rivalry game that year. This choice was made for several reasons, with the financial impact being fundamental.
In the upcoming 2024-25 season, the Lobos/Aggies football game will be at Aggie Memorial Stadium in Las Cruces, then the Lobos/Aggies men’s basketball game will be played at the Pit on December 7. The game in Las Cruces has not yet been defined, but will be played on Saturday.
Despite what some believe, there is no law or state mandate that legally binds the two teams to play more than once a year, or even once for that matter. In fact, UNM and NMSU have quietly backed away from regular rivalry meetings in many sports for various reasons over the past decade, with little to no public backlash.
This agreement does not affect scheduling decisions for women’s basketball, which was played just once last season and in other years.
Both schools’ sports information departments said the Rio Grande Rivalry was one of only two NCAA Division I non-conference rivalries in men’s basketball to play twice per season (many twice-per-season rivalries are between teams in the same conference). Now the only regularly scheduled, twice-a-season non-conference rivalry will be the Battle of the Boulevard in Nashville between Lipscomb (Atlantic Sun Conference) and Belmont (Missouri Valley Conference).
Although fans of both schools often suggest that playing their rival in bad years only hurts their team’s postseason chances due to the hits made in computer rankings, historical data from the RPI era and the more recent NCAA era NET show that this rarely happens. .
One advantage of going down to one game per season is scheduling flexibility.
The Lobos, who will go from an 18-game to a 20-game Mountain West schedule, will now have just 11 nonconference games to schedule.
After a 26-win season in the top 25 NET ranking, in which the NCAA Selection Committee said it would not have selected the Lobos for the NCAA Tournament if they had not won the conference tournament, the Lobos moved to a much more ambitious non-conference slate this season that includes a road game in St. John’s (at Madison Square Garden), a much more competitive non-conference tournament in California that includes Arizona State, USC and Saint Mary’s, and at least another game against an important program that is still in the works.
