- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 404,295
- Reaction score
- 43
Heading into the 2024-25 season, the UTEP men's basketball team was loaded with returners.
It was coming off a run to the Conference USA tournament championship game, talking about finishing the job and going to the NCAAs with a veteran, experienced team.
Golding was able to start the season with lots of promise, but he was never able to get that veteran team to fight together to be something special.
After closing out this season, the UTEP outlook will see major change. Six of the nine scholarship players with eligibility hit the transfer portal immediately.
"The majority of our roster next year will be new players," coach Joe Golding said, a few days after his team finished an 18-15 season with a loss in the quarterfinals of the CUSA tournament
"The way we finished we need some new players, we need some new juice, we need some new energy, some new names," Golding continued. "That's the beauty of the portal, how you can change it from one year to another."
"Change" will be an operative word going forward.
UTEP will begin next season with at most three returning lettermen, Golding's staff appears set to turn over and he will likely begin the final season of a five-year contract in the fall. A contract extension doesn't look forthcoming after a season that ended with a losing conference record and an ouster in the tournament quarterfinals.
Golding, though, is going to get a chance to recapture the success that ultimately brought him to UTEP. Golding's brand of basketball was focused on energy, relentless defensive pressure and finding second-tier stars ambitious enough to swing for the fence.
Golding has been genuine in his years in El Paso. This "good guy" will have a chance to get hot again with new players who care as much as he does.
Obviously, what happened between all the optimism and the new reality was a disappointing season that failed to meet expectations.
UTEP started brightly, at one point moving out to a 17-7 record, a spot near the top of the conference and the feeling that all the promise with the returning players was being met. The Miners sold out the Don Haskins Center for a game against their rivals New Mexico State and were poised to grab the type of buzz the program has been angling for the last decade.
Then the Aggies won, 85-57, and nothing seemed the same afterward. UTEP did win some big games after that, the 17-7 mark came after a win at New Mexico State almost a month later, but the Miners took a body blow they never seemed to fully recover from.
"From the New Mexico State game on it slowly started to dissipate in front of us," said Golding, who just completed his fourth year as the head coach. "We never could get it back.
"We just couldn't get over the hump, whether it was confidence after the New Mexico State game — mentally there was some stress with some of our players with what's going on on the outside, the voices they're hearing. At the end of the day you have to block all that out."
So what exactly happened between the great start and the flame-out finish?
"I do (know), probably, but I don't want to put it on blast," Golding said. "I'll take the hit, I'm the head coach, I've got to do a better job. In three out of the four years here we've had good non-conference starts, we just have to figure out conference play and that's where we struggled."
The best guess as to what the "do probably" comment refers to is the team dynamic. Early in the season the team was together, and the players say they never lost that. They did seem to lose their confidence after the New Mexico State loss and there was an obvious acknowledgement that with that one setback much was damaged.
There were no more sellouts, no more buzz, plenty of "outside voices" of negativity the team said it was tuning out. When the Miners lose a big game in football or men's basketball, there is an inevitable "same old UTEP" vibe among fans.
Whenever a team coming off one of those losses talking about "tuning out outside voices," that is code for the outside voices definitely being heard.
UTEP seemed to lose its way in terms of getting away from what it was best at — hyper-aggressive defense that forced turnovers in buckets, which made up for other shortcomings and supplied an identity — and Golding blamed himself for that. UTEP never fully found that defense again.
Golding's starters lacked resiliency and ultimately couldn't overcome adversity. His bench was uneven so Golding had nowhere to turn as he tried to stay true to his brand of basketball.
What Golding second guessed was an Xs and Os decision in the second NMSU game, the one UTEP won to get to 16-7 (it then beat Florida International to get to 17-7 before a seven-game losing streak).
Because of the rebounding struggles caused by a shorter lineup (the Miners started three guards and a 6-foot-6 power forward playing a position up in Otis Frazier), UTEP packed in its defense and played closer to the basket instead of embracing what had been its identity of aggressively trying to force steals on the perimeter.
That worked against NMSU and FIU, but in the process the Miners got away from what they did better than anyone in the nation (stealing the ball) and didn't find it again when everything spiraled.
"I have to do a better job of coaching," Golding said.
Exactly why switching gears proved so difficult to execute will be one of the mysteries of the year.
Wherever the exact moment everything went south was debatable, though the first NMSU game is a place to start.
Before that, UTEP was getting a nation-leading 11.6 steals per game. Starting with the big loss to the Aggies, that dropped to 9.0. Points scored went from 74.5 to 70.7, points allowed was more jarring: 65.9 to 74.8. The 3-point shooting dropped from 38.7% to 32.2%.
Along the way sixth man and occasional starter Ahamad Bynum was suspended for the first time (he wasn't along for the tournament). Golding and all the players said the locker room stuck together and pointed to a huge win against Sam Houston at the CUSA tournament as proof.
"Whether we lost confidence or bad coaching, I don't know the answer," Golding said. "The 3-point shooting was glaring during that streak."
UTEP tried to get back to what it was doing defensively early, but that was elusive. A team full of veterans, a team that lauded its leadership, wasn't able to steady itself. That seemed to go back about what Golding said about confidence.
"We couldn't get back to being aggressive and turning people over," Golding said. "That hurt us offensively too, we were scoring so much off turnovers and in transition. When we quit turning people over and quit being aggressive that hurt us with our scoring because we didn't get easy baskets any more."
Now the direction changes. The Miners graduated three players and had six more hit the portal, leaving reserve guard Trey Hornton, reserve forward Elijah Jones and back-up point guard KJ Thomas as the only scholarship players returning.
They added two guards in the early signing period, leaving 10 scholarships on hand (the NCAA is going from 13 to 15 scholarships for men's basketball in 2025-26).
The sophomores Horton and Jones and the freshman Thomas showed potential this past season, now they have to dramatically improve in what admittedly is a huge opportunity for them.
As of now Golding hadn't received an extension (athletic director Jim Senter offered a "no comment" when asked at the end of March), so he will be entering a final season on a five-year deal needing to take a big step forward.
"Every year is big but this is definitely big," Golding said. "There's pressure every year, there's pressure every game. That's the beauty of coaching at UTEP, they care. We have three winning seasons out of four years here, it's not like we've gotten our butts kicked.
"But we have to be better in conference play and we have to get to where we're competing for a championship. I have to figure that out."
The portal and big money have changed college basketball — especially at small and mid-level universities. Big programs like the ones that advanced to last week's Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA playoffs have made it difficult to retain top players in Conference USA.
Golding will need money to rebuild. He will have more resources to do that. UTEP's NIL money, essentially a salary cap, per sources is going to $600,000 from $400,000, which will put it on a par with everyone in Conference USA except the forever-exception Liberty (Liberty reportedly has more than $1 million to pay its players).
That's quite tangible. For example, UTEP tried to get back an old hand Ze'Rik Onyema, before this year. Onyema transferred to Texas away from UTEP after the 22-23 season, didn't play much under Rodney Terry last year and was interested in coming back.
The pay cut would have gone from an estimated $300,000 per year (what Texas players roughly make, per reports) to $30,000 at UTEP ($400,000 divided by 13 scholarship players). Onyema stayed at Texas and averaged 10 minutes per game this past year.
The Miners will now have money that puts them on a par with Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky, and UTEP would like to get a bigger, more conventional roster, though finding big men at the mid-major level is always a supreme challenge.
Obviously, a 6-10 center, a 6-8 power forward (Jones?) and a 6-6 small forward is every mid-major coach's goal and Golding will chase that.
"Get the best players we can get," Golding said when asked what recruiting priorities are. "There is a lot of competition, it comes down to NIL and what kind of NIL we can put together, then we put together the best roster we can to get this thing back to playing for conference championships."
More specifically, "We have to figure out how to rebound the basketball," Golding said after a season when his team was minus-5.5 on the boards. "We tried that group for two years, we won 18 games both years, we made it to the conference tournament championship (in 2024) and to the point we were 17-7 this year and did some really good things.
"We did not finish the way we wanted to finish. We've had that group together two years, now we need to give a new group a chance. Fortunately for us, in the transfer portal era, the transfer portal can hurt you but it can also help you. This year it's going to have to help us.".
That's the only way forward for a team that at the moment is using five of its 15 scholarships.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Analysis: After late-season struggles, UTEP men to change course
Continue reading...
It was coming off a run to the Conference USA tournament championship game, talking about finishing the job and going to the NCAAs with a veteran, experienced team.
Golding was able to start the season with lots of promise, but he was never able to get that veteran team to fight together to be something special.
After closing out this season, the UTEP outlook will see major change. Six of the nine scholarship players with eligibility hit the transfer portal immediately.
You must be registered for see images attach
"The majority of our roster next year will be new players," coach Joe Golding said, a few days after his team finished an 18-15 season with a loss in the quarterfinals of the CUSA tournament
"The way we finished we need some new players, we need some new juice, we need some new energy, some new names," Golding continued. "That's the beauty of the portal, how you can change it from one year to another."
"Change" will be an operative word going forward.
UTEP will begin next season with at most three returning lettermen, Golding's staff appears set to turn over and he will likely begin the final season of a five-year contract in the fall. A contract extension doesn't look forthcoming after a season that ended with a losing conference record and an ouster in the tournament quarterfinals.
Golding, though, is going to get a chance to recapture the success that ultimately brought him to UTEP. Golding's brand of basketball was focused on energy, relentless defensive pressure and finding second-tier stars ambitious enough to swing for the fence.
Golding has been genuine in his years in El Paso. This "good guy" will have a chance to get hot again with new players who care as much as he does.
How the UTEP men's basketball season turned
Obviously, what happened between all the optimism and the new reality was a disappointing season that failed to meet expectations.
UTEP started brightly, at one point moving out to a 17-7 record, a spot near the top of the conference and the feeling that all the promise with the returning players was being met. The Miners sold out the Don Haskins Center for a game against their rivals New Mexico State and were poised to grab the type of buzz the program has been angling for the last decade.
Then the Aggies won, 85-57, and nothing seemed the same afterward. UTEP did win some big games after that, the 17-7 mark came after a win at New Mexico State almost a month later, but the Miners took a body blow they never seemed to fully recover from.
"From the New Mexico State game on it slowly started to dissipate in front of us," said Golding, who just completed his fourth year as the head coach. "We never could get it back.
"We just couldn't get over the hump, whether it was confidence after the New Mexico State game — mentally there was some stress with some of our players with what's going on on the outside, the voices they're hearing. At the end of the day you have to block all that out."
So what exactly happened between the great start and the flame-out finish?
"I do (know), probably, but I don't want to put it on blast," Golding said. "I'll take the hit, I'm the head coach, I've got to do a better job. In three out of the four years here we've had good non-conference starts, we just have to figure out conference play and that's where we struggled."
You must be registered for see images attach
What happened?
The best guess as to what the "do probably" comment refers to is the team dynamic. Early in the season the team was together, and the players say they never lost that. They did seem to lose their confidence after the New Mexico State loss and there was an obvious acknowledgement that with that one setback much was damaged.
There were no more sellouts, no more buzz, plenty of "outside voices" of negativity the team said it was tuning out. When the Miners lose a big game in football or men's basketball, there is an inevitable "same old UTEP" vibe among fans.
Whenever a team coming off one of those losses talking about "tuning out outside voices," that is code for the outside voices definitely being heard.
UTEP seemed to lose its way in terms of getting away from what it was best at — hyper-aggressive defense that forced turnovers in buckets, which made up for other shortcomings and supplied an identity — and Golding blamed himself for that. UTEP never fully found that defense again.
Golding's starters lacked resiliency and ultimately couldn't overcome adversity. His bench was uneven so Golding had nowhere to turn as he tried to stay true to his brand of basketball.
Changing schematics backfires
What Golding second guessed was an Xs and Os decision in the second NMSU game, the one UTEP won to get to 16-7 (it then beat Florida International to get to 17-7 before a seven-game losing streak).
Because of the rebounding struggles caused by a shorter lineup (the Miners started three guards and a 6-foot-6 power forward playing a position up in Otis Frazier), UTEP packed in its defense and played closer to the basket instead of embracing what had been its identity of aggressively trying to force steals on the perimeter.
That worked against NMSU and FIU, but in the process the Miners got away from what they did better than anyone in the nation (stealing the ball) and didn't find it again when everything spiraled.
"I have to do a better job of coaching," Golding said.
Exactly why switching gears proved so difficult to execute will be one of the mysteries of the year.
'Lost confident' or 'bad coaching'
Wherever the exact moment everything went south was debatable, though the first NMSU game is a place to start.
Before that, UTEP was getting a nation-leading 11.6 steals per game. Starting with the big loss to the Aggies, that dropped to 9.0. Points scored went from 74.5 to 70.7, points allowed was more jarring: 65.9 to 74.8. The 3-point shooting dropped from 38.7% to 32.2%.
Along the way sixth man and occasional starter Ahamad Bynum was suspended for the first time (he wasn't along for the tournament). Golding and all the players said the locker room stuck together and pointed to a huge win against Sam Houston at the CUSA tournament as proof.
"Whether we lost confidence or bad coaching, I don't know the answer," Golding said. "The 3-point shooting was glaring during that streak."
UTEP tried to get back to what it was doing defensively early, but that was elusive. A team full of veterans, a team that lauded its leadership, wasn't able to steady itself. That seemed to go back about what Golding said about confidence.
"We couldn't get back to being aggressive and turning people over," Golding said. "That hurt us offensively too, we were scoring so much off turnovers and in transition. When we quit turning people over and quit being aggressive that hurt us with our scoring because we didn't get easy baskets any more."
Golding: 'I have to figure that out'
Now the direction changes. The Miners graduated three players and had six more hit the portal, leaving reserve guard Trey Hornton, reserve forward Elijah Jones and back-up point guard KJ Thomas as the only scholarship players returning.
They added two guards in the early signing period, leaving 10 scholarships on hand (the NCAA is going from 13 to 15 scholarships for men's basketball in 2025-26).
The sophomores Horton and Jones and the freshman Thomas showed potential this past season, now they have to dramatically improve in what admittedly is a huge opportunity for them.
As of now Golding hadn't received an extension (athletic director Jim Senter offered a "no comment" when asked at the end of March), so he will be entering a final season on a five-year deal needing to take a big step forward.
"Every year is big but this is definitely big," Golding said. "There's pressure every year, there's pressure every game. That's the beauty of coaching at UTEP, they care. We have three winning seasons out of four years here, it's not like we've gotten our butts kicked.
"But we have to be better in conference play and we have to get to where we're competing for a championship. I have to figure that out."
Reshaping the roster
The portal and big money have changed college basketball — especially at small and mid-level universities. Big programs like the ones that advanced to last week's Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA playoffs have made it difficult to retain top players in Conference USA.
Golding will need money to rebuild. He will have more resources to do that. UTEP's NIL money, essentially a salary cap, per sources is going to $600,000 from $400,000, which will put it on a par with everyone in Conference USA except the forever-exception Liberty (Liberty reportedly has more than $1 million to pay its players).
That's quite tangible. For example, UTEP tried to get back an old hand Ze'Rik Onyema, before this year. Onyema transferred to Texas away from UTEP after the 22-23 season, didn't play much under Rodney Terry last year and was interested in coming back.
The pay cut would have gone from an estimated $300,000 per year (what Texas players roughly make, per reports) to $30,000 at UTEP ($400,000 divided by 13 scholarship players). Onyema stayed at Texas and averaged 10 minutes per game this past year.
The Miners will now have money that puts them on a par with Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky, and UTEP would like to get a bigger, more conventional roster, though finding big men at the mid-major level is always a supreme challenge.
Obviously, a 6-10 center, a 6-8 power forward (Jones?) and a 6-6 small forward is every mid-major coach's goal and Golding will chase that.
"Get the best players we can get," Golding said when asked what recruiting priorities are. "There is a lot of competition, it comes down to NIL and what kind of NIL we can put together, then we put together the best roster we can to get this thing back to playing for conference championships."
More specifically, "We have to figure out how to rebound the basketball," Golding said after a season when his team was minus-5.5 on the boards. "We tried that group for two years, we won 18 games both years, we made it to the conference tournament championship (in 2024) and to the point we were 17-7 this year and did some really good things.
"We did not finish the way we wanted to finish. We've had that group together two years, now we need to give a new group a chance. Fortunately for us, in the transfer portal era, the transfer portal can hurt you but it can also help you. This year it's going to have to help us.".
That's the only way forward for a team that at the moment is using five of its 15 scholarships.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Analysis: After late-season struggles, UTEP men to change course
Continue reading...
