Apr. 1—Two questions I wanted to ask of new University of New Mexico men's basketball coach Eric Olen at Tuesday's introductory news conference, but due to time constraints chose not to:
1: Coach, how often during your lifetime have you mistakenly been called Eric Olsen? And ...
2. Coach, if four years from now your Lobo teams have won a Mountain West Tournament title, an MW regular-season title and gone to back-to-back NCAA tournaments, would you consider staying?
Regarding question No. 1, Google did not let me down. This from the Times of San Diego, dated Dec 29, 2024: "(UC San Diego) Head coach Eric Olsen is confident in his team, and thinks they are playing good basketball."
Regarding question No. 2, my time was not the only constraint. Time is what Olen needs — and deserves.
As Olen himself pointed out, "I've been here less than 24 hours."
What Olen accomplished at UCSD is beyond impressive, prompting UNM Athletic Director Fernando Lovo to hire him when it appeared coaches with more experience at higher levels of the college game were highly interested in the job.
That record: 240-119 over 12 years, five Division II NCAA Tournament appearances, 51-17 the last two years after the Tritons moved to Division I, a 30-5 record and an NCAA Tournament berth this season.
Oh, and a victory at Utah State — something only one other team, the Lobos under now-former coach Richard Pitino, was able to achieve.
It was under Pitino's guidance, of course, that the Lobos won those aforementioned Mountain West titles and qualified for those two Big Dances.
That Pitino then danced away to Xavier, for more money and a bigger stage, was as predictable as New Mexico breezes in the spring (cue up the state song) and should not be held against him.
Nor should it be held against Olen if, four years from now, the Lobos have not, in fact, won two Mountain West titles and gone to two NCAA tournaments. What Pitino accomplished here was remarkable, considering the state of the program when he took the job. The Lobos went 6-16, 1-8 in conference play, in 2020-21 — the COVID season — under coach Paul Weir.
Basically, Pitino had to start from scratch.
Now, so does Olen. Unless key potential returnees from this year's 28-7 MW champions can be persuaded to withdraw from the NCAA transfer portal, Olen must recruit an entirely new roster.
It wasn't like this when he took the head-coaching job at UCSD in 2013. He'd been a Tritons assistant coach the previous nine seasons, and the transfer portal wasn't even a gleam in Deion Sanders' eye.
Now, he's in a different city in a different state guiding a different program than that in which he worked the past 21 years — faced with a daunting task.
What persuaded Lovo that he's up to it?
Olen, Lovo said at Tuesday's news conference, checked all the boxes — on and off the court.
"Lobo Nation, I'm just telling you," Lovo said. "You're gonna love what you see in The Pit."
(Question for Lovo: Where do you shop for socks? Those were beauties).
Olen presents as a player of modest abilities, playing for Spring Hill College in his native Mobile, Alabama, striving to see the game in a way more talented players did not.
Bill Carr, his coach at Spring Hill, evidently saw that quality in him. That's why, when Carr took the head-coaching job at UCSD, he invited Olen to join him as an assistant — changing forever the course of the younger man's life.
Olen coaches the same way. Nobody wins without good players, he said.
"Every game that we play," he said, "we're gonna go into that game and we're gonna evaluate what are the advantages that we have, what are the ...
