eNewMexican

New Lobos filled with fresh faces at open practice

By Will Webber wwebber@sfnewmexican.com

ALBUQUERQUE — To be fair, the doors to the Rudy Davalos Basketball Center have worked just fine the last 15 months.

It wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon, however, that the University of New Mexico men’s basketball team tossed out the welcome mat and invited people in.

Opening its practice for the first time since the end of the pre-pandemic days of the 2019-20 college basketball season,

UNM allowed a group of local media members into its practice facility for the first hour and a half of Tuesday’s workout. It was their first look at the slew of new faces that included players, coaches and even support staff.

Richard Pitino, hired less than three months ago to rebuild a program that has been in a steady decline for the better part of a decade, didn’t address the media but did take a few minutes to walk around and personally greet each TV and print journalist in attendance, a group that included the team’s radio broadcasters, Hunter Greene and Robert Portnoy.

Among the players to spend time taking questions from the media was guard K.J. Jenkins, a 6-foot-2 transfer who started his college journey at North Georgia and played last season in junior college at Kilgore College in Texas. He’s one of eight newcomers to the roster since Pitino took over, making the crowded Davalos court look like a confusing mass of unrecognizable faces.

Jenkins was one of two players not to practice due to a foot injury that wasn’t deemed serious. The other absence was Jamal Masburn Jr., a transfer who followed Pitino from Minnesota. Mash hasn’t arrived in Albuquerque but is expected to join the team soon, a spokeswoman said.

“My focus is to do whatever to help this team,” Jenkins said. “Me sitting out and cheering the team on or me hitting the game winner, that’s my focus.”

Tuesday’s practice was more about fundamentals and terminology than it was anything else. Pitino allowed the players to run a pickup game toward the end of the afternoon, allowing a number of the new players to show off their skills going full speed.

Before that, the players spent time shooting and defending 3-point shots. Everyone, the bigs included, fired shot after shot from beyond the perimeter. Guard Jalen House, a transfer from Arizona State, was particularly impressive while others, like returning guard Jeremiah Francis, struggled to find consistency.

Jenkins said the team has spent considerable time together since most of the players arrived on campus this month. Between the locker room, the weight room, the gym and in social settings, he said they’re starting to mesh.

“With a new team it’s important to gel and get that chemistry, and that’s what this summer’s all about,” he said.

The fact that he rose from a Division II program and then went the JUCO route before landing at UNM, Jenkins said it’s an eye-opener to finally be at the college game’s highest level.

“It’s real exciting being around good players, it’s something new to me,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to be around good players and guys who wanted to go pro.”

What Pitino wants is more of these open-door sessions. He has said in the past that something was lost during the pandemic when the media wasn’t allowed in. The lack of exposure made it difficult for fans to connect with the players on the team and made what was an unusual and uneasy situation in 2020-21 even worse because the entire team was literally in protective quarantine the entire time.

For now, let the doors swing open and may the Pitino era finally begin.

SPORTS

en-us

2021-06-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://enewmexican.pressreader.com/article/281797106946225

Santa Fe New Mexican