Role Reversal : New Mexico State Put the Bickering Behind and Transformed Itself From Underachiever to Leader of the Big West Conference

New Mexico State forward Cliff Reed marveled at the sight of seven teammates sitting together in a restaurant last week, having a little lunch, a lot of laughs.

“Nothing like this happened earlier in the season,” Reed said. “We didn’t even eat together. We’d each be off doing our own thing. We were always real serious and we all had attitudes. Now, we’re having fun together, doing a lot more things as a team.”

Yes, all seems well in Las Cruces, N.M., where the Aggies (23-6), who stole the hearts of college basketball fans last season by making an improbable run to the NCAA tournament’s round of 16, have won the Big West Conference championship and are favored to win this weekend’s Big West tournament at the Long Beach Arena.

But two months ago, this was a team on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Few of the players really liked each other, and few accepted the roles Coach Neil McCarthy laid out for them. Players who were supposed to rebound and play defense wanted to shoot. Non-starters wanted to be go-to scorers.

The younger players complained that the coach gave seniors preferential treatment--especially after senior forward Tracey Ware, who was benched for missing a practice, did not wear his jersey under his warm-ups for a game and was still allowed to remain

on the team.

“The underclassmen figured if they did something like that, they would have been kicked off the team,” Reed said. “It caused a lot of animosity.”

After opening with three impressive Great Alaska Shootout victories, including a 95-94 championship-game decision over Illinois, the Aggies showed a general lack of effort and organization during December games, a fact Aggie fans quickly noticed despite a 7-3 record going into January.

“They were saying, ‘What’s wrong with the guys? What’s going on? There’s got to be a problem,’ ” Reed said. “ ‘Is the coach not letting them play? Does someone want the spotlight?’ Those were the rumors in Cruces.”

There were off-the-court problems as well. The Aggies had already lost a projected starter when Loren Marshall, a standout transfer from San Francisco City College, was shot in the leg during a fracas at a Texas El Paso fraternity party last fall and later dropped out of school.

Then in December, two players, Corey Rogers and David Lofton, were accused of beating a man outside a Las Cruces restaurant. Battery charges against the two were dropped earlier this month, but at the time, the incident cast yet another shadow on what was quickly becoming a dark season.

“Back in December, I figured we’d finish real low in the Big West Conference,” said Reed, who averages 10.4 points and 5.7 rebounds. “There was no effort, whatsoever, in some games. We’d play hard for maybe 20 minutes a game. There was no offensive movement. Whoever got the ball shot it.

“When we won the (Alaska) Shootout on ESPN, we figured we were the world. That was our downfall.”

The Aggies were pretty confident at the start of the season. They had three starters back from a 25-8 team that was eliminated by UCLA in the NCAA tournament, 85-78, and point guard Sam Crawford made several preseason All-American teams.

Ware, a starter in 1990-91, was back after missing the 1991-92 season because of a knee injury, and New Mexico State added much-needed outside shooting with Rogers, a transfer from Northern Arizona, and Darrin Jackson, who averaged 29.6 points at Antelope Valley College last season.

But all that northern exposure in Alaska--Crawford was named most valuable player of the nationally televised tournament after scoring 32 points in the championship game, and New Mexico State jumped to 21st in the AP poll--went right to the Aggies’ heads.

“Going to the Sweet 16 and winning the Alaska Shootout may have given some players an illusion of grandeur,” said McCarthy, in his eighth season as New Mexico State’s coach. “But we were quickly brought down to earth when we played UTEP and New Mexico.”

Splitting two games with UTEP and losing twice to the Lobos in December weren’t this season’s low points, though. Those occurred Dec. 30, when the Aggies gave a minimal effort in a lackluster 83-69 victory over Division II East Texas State, and Jan. 9, when New Mexico State was blown out by Cal State Long Beach, 97-71.

After the Long Beach game, Ware and Crawford, the team captains, called the meeting that turned the season around.

“We went over everything,” Reed said. “The problems we had off the court, we couldn’t take on the court. A lot of guys didn’t hang together, everyone was off doing their own thing, and that leaked onto the court.

“You could see it in our play--some guys had favorites and only passed to certain guys. Guys would say, ‘You’re not giving the ball to me. Why should I give it to you?’ ”

The Aggies, who play UC Irvine today at 3 p.m., reached a few other conclusions at the meeting: They realized they could win in a conference with many good teams but no dominant team. They agreed that one ball was enough for all of them and vowed to be more team-oriented.

“Basically, we said, ‘Let’s all be a part of this and not all be individuals, and we’ll be a lot better,’ ” Crawford said.

They were. New Mexico State won its next eight games and has gone 14-2, including an emotional 90-88 victory over Nevada Las Vegas on March 1, since that Long Beach game. The statistics reflect the team’s unselfishness--scoring averages for the top eight players range from 6.7 points to 12.3.

Reed, Ware and center James Dockery have been doing most of the rebounding, and Crawford leads the nation with an average of 9.2 assists. The Aggies’ matchup zone has been effective, and shot selection has improved. New Mexico State has actually made more free throws, 525, than opponents have shot, 503.

“We gave up the me notion for the we concept in early January,” said McCarthy, who has built his reputation by molding groups of community college transfers into competitive Division I teams. “Good JC guys are used to being the top men on the block, and fitting all those personalities into a cohesive unit takes awhile.”

Jackson is a good example of why New Mexico State had its fifth consecutive 20-victory season. He went to Las Cruces expecting to do the things he had done at Antelope Valley--shoot three-pointers, drive to the basket, score lots of points, be the go-to guy.

When his role was reduced to coming off the bench and taking only five or six shots a game, mostly from the perimeter, he complained to McCarthy and second-guessed his decision to go to New Mexico State. But he has since made sacrifices.

“I was asked to accept a role and I definitely had a problem with it,” said Jackson, a 6-8 sophomore. “But right now, it’s not fair to the team to think about personal things. I still hope to pump my average up and I want more playing time, but everyone’s concentrating on winning the Big West tournament and doing well in the NCAA tournament.”

Crawford, the 5-8 senior from Westchester High and Moorpark College, has also been a key player.

“He has learned to distribute the ball on the basis of reason, not emotion,” McCarthy said. “Last year, he had a tendency to get involved with individual matchups with other point guards and tried to take games over at times.

“This year I’ve seen more intelligent leadership, a guy who knows he can win a game by getting the ball to the right people at the right time. And when the time calls for it, he has taken over games.”

The Aggies seem poised to make more noise in the NCAA tournament. This is probably a better team than the 1991-92 club, and they’re on a roll.

From a sour 12 to the Sweet 16?

It could happen.

“Man, we’re a completely different team than we were in December,” Jackson said. “We look out for each other and we’re always togther, off the court and on.”