Kurt Johnson, General Manager and Executive Editor of the Las Cruces Bulletin, highlights local sports stories.
Scott Brocato:
Let's start with NMSU, and let's start with football.
Kurt Johnson:
Excellent! So coming up, NMSU's in this run of Wednesday games. The last of the three is on Wednesday. They'll play Jacksonville State. It's a home game. They're back home again. They'll play Jacksonville State, which is going to be a pretty good test, I think, for New Mexico State. The Gamecocks are coming in 5-2 overall. They're actually going to be coming off a bye, soo they've had a little time to prepare.
New Mexico State's trying to figure out who they are still, and Jacksonville State seems to be in pretty good position. So they've got a pretty good quarterback. His name's Caden Creel. He kind of runs and throws. He kind of does a little bit of everything, and that'll be a really good test for the Aggies. So football will be interesting. They get out of that run of Wednesday games, and then coming up after that, they get back to actual Saturday college football. But for right now, they're one more Wednesday team.
Scott Brocato:
How about volleyball?
Kurt Johnson:
So the volleyball team actually had a perfect weekend. They got them back to even in district in conference play. So they're coming in conference play having won three matches in a row. They swept Jacksonville State and now they have Middle Tennessee coming up and Delaware who are...Middle Tennessee's kind of at the upper end of the league, Delaware's at the bottom. So they get a little bit of a test, but they've got Tess Fuqua, Ashley Herman, Jalen Coley are some of the young ladies who are playing really well for them. And they've been on a hot streak. So they come in having won three matches in a row. They're back to even in the league and hoping that they can kind of make a run and get into the upper half as they head towards the tail end of the season. So it's been going well for them.
Scott Brocato:
And how about basketball?
Kurt Johnson:
College basketball! Yeah, it's hard to believe college basketball is almost here.
So just a couple things to be aware of. The college basketball season opens. They're at the Pan Am Center. The women open Monday, November 2nd at a 6pm game and the men, (the women are) against San Diego and the men play Western New Mexico November 3rd at 630. Again, both those are at Pan Am.
The men's team actually brought in a transfer by the name of DJ Dudley, who comes in from Louisiana Tech, where he was one of their top scorers last year. So that's going to be the interesting story for the men is to see how he integrates with the team.
The women's team is all new except for one. They have Adeniyi Amadou, was the new coach. He comes from Rhode Island and he's from France. And interestingly enough, nine of their players have French roots. So they have a lot of French players. A couple of them came with him from Rhode Island. And kind of the one outlier is Emma Christiano, who's a Las Cruces native, played at Las Cruces High School. She's the one holdover from last year's team. Everyone else is new.
So it's time to see how he does as a recruiter and how that team's going to take off this year. A rough year for them last year, so they've got some improving to do, but a whole new group of young ladies to do it. So it'll be interesting to watch.
Scott Brocato:
Let's move on to high school, starting with football.
Kurt Johnson:
So the big game this week in high school football locally is Centennial plays El Dorado, and that's at El Dorado. In region play, El Dorado is at the top of the region. Centennial is right beneath them. And then Las Cruces and El Dorado--actually Volcano Vista is with El Dorado at the top of the region--those two teams are undefeated in region play. And then Centennial has one loss. Las Cruces has two, because they just lost to Volcano Vista. So it's all kind of playing out for two weeks from now when it's going to be Las Cruces against Centennial to close out the season, probably for playoff positioning. But we see first how Centennial does against El Dorado. That's the big game of the week.
The other big football story locally is Mesilla Valley Christian, which plays, if people don't know, eight-man football. A little bit different than the 11-man game. Smaller schools, eight-man football. There's 19 teams in eight-man football in the state. 12 of them make the playoffs. And right now, Mesilla Valley Christian's in pretty good position. They're 7-1, and they're looking like they have a chance to make a run at a championship. So that's interesting, the brackets for the eight Mountain playoffs actually come out October 24th. And so it's gonna be interesting to see how they draw in the bracket. The goal is to get in the top four, because then you don't have to play in the first round.
Scott Brocato:
And let's finish off with soccer, high school soccer.
Kurt Johnson:
So the boys and girls' soccer brackets are also about to come out. It's been interesting. The southern part of the state doesn't get a whole lot of respect when it comes to soccer. Oregon Mountain has been dominating people in girls' soccer, and they're undefeated, but they're still ranked 5th or 7th in the state, depending upon who you ask, behind a lot of teams from the northern part of the state. Two of those teams are smaller schools, but they're private schools. But a lot of the schools that they've beaten or can compete with are ranked higher than them. Their hope is to get enough of a high-ranking, high seeding coming into the tournament that they can get a few home games and make a run. But right now, they're in good position to make a good playoff run.
On the boys' side, Las Cruces and Centennial are kind of still in the running to win a district championship. So they've got an interesting little back and forth going locally as well. So internally, a lot of stuff going on. The playoffs are coming. The brackets come out pretty quick for soccer. I think if I can check real quick, I can't remember when they come out, but it's coming out pretty quick.