Paul Weir and UNM have agreed to separate at the end of the season. (Roberto E. Rosales / Albuquerque Journal)
Paul Weir retires at the end of the season as coach of the New Mexico Lobos.
The 41-year-old men’s basketball coach, in the fourth year of a six-year contract with UNM, reached an agreement with the university on a buyout, although the conditions for the buyout were not immediately available. His contract requires $ 700,000 to be bought out over the next two seasons, although the deal is apparently less than that. The Journal has learned that UNM Athletics intends to pay for the entire buyout with money raised privately.
Weir, who earned $ 775,000 this season, notified his players Friday night.
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“This is the perfect time for a transition in Lobo Basketball,” Weir said in a news release sent out moments after the Journal published its original story. ‘I can not imagine a more optimal period than now for all of us to accept a new beginning. I am incredibly grateful to Eddie (Nuñez, athletic director), President (Garnett) Stokes and the UNM staff for giving me the opportunity to finish my career in such a polite way. Their leadership will surely make this next chapter of Lobo Basketball the greatest one. ”
Weir holds a 58-60 record at UNM and a five-year career record of 86-66 that includes one-season coaching at New Mexico State University. This season, with the team relocated from abroad for matches due to restrictions related to public health in the new Mexico, the Lobos are 6-13 and 2-13 overall in Mountain West play – alone in the last place in the 11-team league.
The Lobos have a game in Colorado State on Wednesday and then the MWC Tournament from March 10 to 13 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Nuñez will address media on Saturday morning. A national search for his replacement will begin immediately.
“Paul and I agree that a change of leadership in our men’s basketball program is currently in our best interests,” Nuñez said in a statement. “It was definitely a challenge for Coach Weir, his staff and our student-athletes, but it is the right time for a fresh start after evaluating the overall program. I want to thank Paul and his family for their dedication and service to New Mexico and we wish them all the best in the future. ”
Weir took over a four-season relegation program from Craig Neal as head coach – and ultimately could not change that. UNM remains in its longest post-season drought in more than half a century without an NCAA tournament or NIT invitation since 2013-14.
After being selected to finish ninth in his first season, Weir led the Lobos to a third-place finish in the Mountain West, and the team won a seven-game winning streak in the late-season MWC Tournament against San Diego. States ridden with a berth in the NCAA tournament at stake.
In 2019, Weir’s second season at UNM, the Lobos beat No. 6 in the Pit, 85-58, for the best win of Weir’s tenure. But the team stumbled out of there, losing 10 of the next 13 and 14-18 overall, 7-11 in the league, and as the No. 7 seed in the conference tournament, losing in the quarterfinals to Utah States.
Weir, who still owes NMSU a buyout obligation when he left the Aggies in 2017 after one season, was swept away by his former school in its first two seasons in four games.
His third season, with a roster selected by sensational transfers, started the Lobos 13-2 with a whip from the Aggies and a big win in Brooklyn over the Big Ten’s Wisconsin Badgers.
But at the end of December 2019, two starters – point guard JJ Caldwell and center Carlton Bragg – were suspended after being accused of crimes for which neither was charged.
Caldwell never played again. Bragg returned for two games in January 2020, only to be discharged later following an arrest by DWI. Later that season, after a road loss in Nevada and former head coach Steve Alford, team members attended a party in Albuquerque, hosted by Lobo senior JaQuan Lyle, when their charter flight was back in the city. At the party, two people were shot, including a UNM softball player.
Season four was the most inexperienced roster in Weir’s tenure with 12 new players and four new staff – all facing a season of uncertainty where games, or even practices, were not allowed in the state due to a strict public health order. is not.
Even before the season kicks off, the top high school recruiter is in memory for the Lobos – Santa Fe High graduate and consensus Top 100 recruiter JB White, who graduated a year early to join his hometown Lobos close – shot dead at a party outside Santa Fe less than a week before moving to Albuquerque to join the team.
Within two weeks, Zane Martin, the leading returning scorer from the Lobos, transferred, citing uncertainty as to whether there would be a season in New Mexico. During the season, two Lobo guards – head guard Keith McGee and first-year guard Nolan Dorsey – announced they would not finish the season.
In all, what turned out to be a historically bad season for the Lobos, Weir was open about the mental toll the season experienced, and living out hotels cost his team and how it cost him more than any win or loss.
“It was something I had to be at peace with for a long time when this season started and we had a little confrontation with what we were dealing with,” Weir said on February 3. ‘… If I wanted to exercise (when the health order forbade it), if I wanted to do certain things that I could probably get away with, we could do those things, but I could not do them completely. I felt a responsibility towards these young men. I felt a responsibility to UNM, and I felt a responsibility to the high school kids who want to play sports there. To the other people here at UNM. …
I held my head up and put my head on the pillow and felt like I was going to come to any question, I accepted it, and I knew it would come. And if I was worried about it, I would not have acted this way. ”
Come back tonight and in Saturday’s Journal for more information on this story.