Paul Weir and UNM agreed to part ways at the end of the season. (Roberto E. Rosales / Albuquerque newspaper)
Paul Weir is stepping down as coach of the New Mexico Wolves at the end of the season.
The 41-year-old male basketball coach, in the fourth year of a six-year contract with UNM, reached an agreement with the university on a purchase, although the terms of that purchase were not immediately available. His contract provided for $ 700,000 in buyout over the next two seasons, although it is believed that the agreement reached is for less than that. The Journal learned that UNM Athletics intends to pay the entire purchase with money raised privately.
Weir, who was earning $ 775,000 this season, informed his players of the move on Friday night.
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“This is the perfect time for a transition at Lobo Basketball,” said Weir in a press release sent moments after the Journal posted its opening story. “I can’t imagine a more ideal time than now for all of us to embrace a new beginning. I am extremely grateful to Eddie (Nuñez, sports director), President (Garnett) Stokes and the UNM staff who kindly provided me with the opportunity to pursue my career in such a courteous manner. Their leadership will certainly make this next chapter of Lobo Basketball the greatest of all. “
Weir has a 58-60 record at UNM and a five-year career record of 86-66 which includes coaching one season at New Mexico State University. This season, with the team relocating out of state due to public health order restrictions in New Mexico, the Wolves are 6-13 overall and 2-13 in Mountain West – alone last in the 11- league team’s.
The Wolves have a game on Wednesday in Colorado State and then the March 10 to 13 MWC tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Nuñez will speak to the media on Saturday morning. A national search for his replacement will begin immediately.
“Paul and I agreed that a change in leadership in our men’s basketball program is in our interest at this point,” Nuñez said in a statement. “Although this year has certainly been challenging for Coach Weir, his team and our student-athletes, after evaluating the overall program, it is an appropriate time for a new start. I want to thank Paul and his family for their commitment and service to New Mexico and we wish them the best in the future. “
Weir took on a declining program after four seasons with Craig Neal as head coach – and ended up being unable to change that. UNM remains in its biggest post-season drought in more than half a century, with no NCAA tournament or NIT invitation since 2013-14.
After being chosen to finish ninth in his first season, Weir took the Wolves to third place in Mountain West, and the team had a winning streak at the end of the season in the MWC championship game against San Diego State with a slot in the NCAA Tournament on the line.
In 2019, Weir’s second season at UNM, the Wolves won No. 6 Nevada in the Pit, 85-58, for the biggest win in Weir’s term. But the team stumbled from there, losing 10 of the next 13 and finished 14-18 overall, 7-11 in the league game and number 7 in the conference championship, losing to Utah State in the quarterfinals.
Weir, who still owes NMSU a purchase from when he left the Aggies in 2017 after a season, was swept by his old school in four games in the first two seasons.
In their third season, with a squad marked by high-level transfers, the Wolves jumped to a 13-2 start with an Aggies sweep and a big win in Brooklyn over Big Ten’s Wisconsin Badgers.
But at the end of December 2019, two titleholders – playmaker JJ Caldwell and center pivot Carlton Bragg – were suspended after being charged with crimes for which neither was charged.
Caldwell never played again. Bragg returned for two games in January 2020, only to be later fired after a DWI arrest. Later that season, after a defeat in Nevada and former coach Steve Alford, team members attended a party in Albuquerque, hosted by Lobo, JaQuan Lyle, when his charter flight returned to the city. At the party, two people were shot, including a UNM softball player.
The fourth season was the most inexperienced squad in Weir’s tenure, with 12 new players and four new team members – all facing a season of uncertainty where games, or even training, were not allowed in the state due to a strict public health order. .
Even before the start of the season, the best high school recruit in the recent memory of Lobos – JB White, a high school graduate from Santa Fe and consensus of the 100 best recruits, who graduated a year earlier to enter his home state, Lobos – was shot and killed at a party outside Santa Fe, less than a week earlier, he would move to Albuquerque to join the team.
Within two weeks, the alleged scorer of the Wolves’ return, Zane Martin, was transferred, citing uncertainty about whether there would be a season in New Mexico. During the season, two Lobo guards – senior guard Keith McGee and guard Nolan Dorsey – announced that they would not end the season.
For all of this, in what has become a historically bad season for the Wolves, Weir was open about the mental tribute that season and living in hotels affected his team and how that was more worrying to him than any victory or defeat.
“That was something I had to be at peace with a long time ago, when this season started and we were faced with what we faced,” said Weir on February 3. “… If I wanted to practice (when the state of health prohibited it), if I wanted to do certain things that I probably could have done, we could have done those things, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt a responsibility to those guys. I felt a responsibility towards UNM, I felt a responsibility towards high school students who want to play sports. For the other people here at UNM. …
“I keep my head up and put my head on the pillow with the feeling that whatever question you are about to ask, I have accepted, and I knew they would come. And if I had been worried about it, I wouldn’t have acted that way along the way. “
Come back tonight and in Saturday’s Diary for more information on this story.