New Mexico State basketball’s problems require a coaching change

December 14 2022 Moraga, CA U.S.A. New Mexico State head coach Greg Heiar looks over Saint Marys defense during the NCAA Men's Basketball game between New Mexico State Aggies and the Saint Mary's Gaels. Saint Marys beat New Mexico State 81-68 at University Credit Union Pavilion Moraga Calif. Thurman James / CSM (Credit Image: © Thurman James/CSM via ZUMA Press Wire) (Cal Sport Media via AP Images)
By Dana O'Neil
Feb 13, 2023

Lost in the shadows of the Super Bowl, a college basketball team canceled the remainder of its season. It happened just about an hour before kickoff, an expertly timed news dump that softened the attention that it might otherwise have merited. “Might” is the right word because there’s no guarantee anyone would have paid strict attention no matter when it was announced because this is New Mexico State, a school that operates well beneath the klieg lights of college basketball.

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But what happened ought to shine like a beacon across the college sports landscape, a seismic reminder of what really matters when we talk about student-athlete welfare. It’s easy to get caught up in the ticky-tack nonsense, to get hepped up about NCAA violations, what is and isn’t pay-to-play in the world of NIL and whether the transfer portal is good or evil.

This is the real stuff.

A player claims he was repeatedly hazed by his teammates — in the Aggies’ home locker room, and on the road — and his teammates watched. He couldn’t stop it by himself, labeling it a “three-on-one situation,’’ and yet no one intervened. No one reported it. It just kept happening, starting all the way back in the summer, continuing until last week. The details shared with local news outlets are disturbing and graphic, not the sort that can be written off as harmless horseplay. This is degradation and humiliation, a warped sense that somehow shaming someone else empowers the abuser.

Shutting down the program, less than a year removed from beating UConn in the first round of the NCAA Tournament as a No. 12 seed, is the only call. Not merely because a collection of players allegedly chose to abuse a teammate; but because no one else cared enough to stop it. The coaching staff, including first-year head coach Greg Heiar, is currently on paid administrative leave while the university conducts its investigation. There’s no way he should keep his job.

The NCAA has a fairly new enforcement policy. Strict liability, they call it. Essentially it means that a coach can no longer use the “I didn’t know about it’’ defense, when it comes to violations committed by staff members. The head coach is responsible for what goes on in his program.

Surely if that applies to something as silly as a staff member contacting a recruit during a no-contact period, or inappropriately middle-manning an NIL deal, it ought to apply here. Perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect a coach to know every little thing his players are doing, but when things run this far afoul of right and wrong, the coach is leading a poisoned program.

Coaches love the word “culture.” This is the New Mexico State men’s basketball culture.

In and of itself, the hazing allegations are disturbing and unsettling enough to warrant some sort of consequence. But considering what happened earlier this year at New Mexico State, it’s unconscionable. The short story is this: In November, an Aggies player shot and killed a University of New Mexico student while New Mexico State was in Albuquerque to play the Lobos. The player, Mike Peake, is said to have acted in self-defense, lured to campus by a girl in an elaborate ruse cooked up by the student whom he shot, Brandon Travis. Travis was seeking revenge for an incident at the rivalry football game between the two schools, in which Peake was alleged to be part of a gang who kicked and beat up Travis.

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Except the nitty gritty is way messier. If you read the police report or, watch the police body cam video interviews, the whole thing feels off. The shooting happened well after curfew — and after a collection of players strolled into the Doubletree Hotel late, waved to their room by an assistant coach standing watch in the lobby for curfew violators.

Immediately after the shooting, Peake met up with three of his teammates and an unidentified driver and put his gun, his phone and a tablet into the trunk of the car. As the state police began their investigation, an officer expressly told Heiar and his assistants that they needed all of that as evidence, and if they found out where any of it was to alert them immediately. Instead, the coaches did not return repeated messages, and the team bus left Albuquerque without alerting police. Only after an officer — lights blazing and sirens screaming — caught up to the bus did an assistant coach turn over the tablet, still bloodied from the shooting. The coaches insisted they did not know where the phone was — though it turned up hours later in the home of an assistant athletic director who was on the bus. As for the gun, the coaches told the police it was back at the hotel in Albuquerque, left there by another assistant.

Eventually, the police collected all of the proper evidence. After a brief suspension, the three players who met up with Peake — Issa Muhammad, Marchelus Avery and Anthony Roy — returned to the team. The coaching staff was not punished by either the university or the police, and the Aggies’ season continued on until Friday, when the university announced it was pausing the program while it investigated the abuse claims.

Yet the whole time, with the local media poking around, trying to piece together what happened and the taint of the scandal attached to their program, players were allegedly abusing their teammate. Over and over again. You do that if you are cruel. You do that if you are ignorant. But you also do that if you think you can get away with it. Clearly the Aggies did.

Because that was the culture at New Mexico State.

(Photo of Greg Heiar: Thurman James / Cal Sport Media via AP Images)

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Dana O'Neil

Dana O’Neil, a senior writer for The Athletic, has worked for more than 25 years as a sports writer, covering the Final Four, the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals and NHL playoffs. She has worked previously at ESPN and the Philadelphia Daily News. She is the author of three books, including "The Big East: Inside the Most Entertaining and Influential Conference in College Basketball History." Follow Dana on Twitter @DanaONeilWriter