Arlington, TX- This is not the way coach Marvin Menzies wanted the beginning of WAC play to begin for his New Mexico State Aggies. The defending WAC champs came into Arlington to face off against UT-Arlington, who were making their WAC debut after spending a whopping 47 years in the Southland conference. It was definitely a debut for the Mavericks as they completely blew out New Mexico State by a score of 68-47. The Aggies only led once in the entire game and that was 3-0 after Daniel Mullings opened up the scoring with a 3-pointer. It was all UTA after that as they took a 37-24 lead into the half. The Aggies were within 10 at one point in the second half, but the Mavericks went on an 8-1 run officially putting the game out of reach. Senior forward Kevin Butler scored a team-high 18 points.
Sophomore Daniel Mullings led the way for NMSU with 21 points on 7-9 shooting and freshman Sim Bhullar put together another good night scoring 14 points to go along with 6 rebounds and a career-high 5 blocks. Those two combined for 35 of the Aggies' 47 points. That is ridiculous. The ten other players that took the court for NMSU had 12. The 'struggling seniors' continued to struggle as Bandja Sy had only 2 points on 1-6 shooting, but managed to bring down 7 rebounds and Tyrone Watson had a 4-6-4 night (not bad) on 1-7 shooting. The Aggies as a team shot 17-51 from the floor (33.3%), 2-18 from 3-point range (11.1%), and 11-23 (47.8%) at the ever-deflating free throw line.
This was the first time that New Mexico State has lost a conference opening game going all the way back to the 2004-2005 season when they were members of the Sun Belt Conference. That season, the Aggies finished 6-24.
They have one day to regroup before departing for Ruston, Louisiana to face off with the red-hot Louisiana Tech Bulldogs (10-3, 1-0) who are coming off a 68-60 win over Denver in their conference opener. NMSU is 11-3 all-time against LaTech in conference play- (7-0 at the PanAm Center; 4-3 in Ruston). That is a must-win for NMSU.
Player of the Game: Sim Bhullar (14 pts, 6 reb, 5 blk)
NEXT GAME: Monday, December 31, @ Louisiana Tech (10-3, 1-0) at 6:00 MT
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