Albuquerque Journal

Preparation Speeds Up for '08 Opener
By Greg Archuleta, Journal Staff Writer

The University of New Mexico football team is avoiding the rush and preparing for a bowl game on Aug. 30.
       
Replace the 90-degree temperatures with a winter chill, and the Lobo practice routine would be almost identical to its New Mexico Bowl preparation last season.
       
UNM coach Rocky Long says the season-opening game against Mountain West Conference rival TCU has forced the Lobos to alter their preseason routine.
      
 “We're going to start working on the game-plan probably a lot earlier in camp,” Long says. “I would've much rather developed our team, and then the week before the first game, work on the game plan.”
       
The Lobos have increased the tempo in practice to get the veterans ready before sending them in and working the last 20 minutes of each practice with the younger, inexperienced players.
       
“It's the same theory as the bowl game,” Long says. “Usually, we spent most of the practice time in the bowl game developing our team for the next year, and then about a week before the bowl game we started working on a game plan.
       
Last year, we didn't do that; we started working on the game plan from Day One, so it put our younger guys that didn't play much behind.”
       
UNM isn't even in full gear until today, but already it has shown a few wrinkles on defense and offense in preparation for the Aug. 30 opener against the Horned Frogs.
       
Trick plays, as rare as snow during the first week of fall camp, have been sprinkled in during the Lobos' offensive drills.
      
 “I think it puts a little more excitement under your butt,” UNM senior nose tackle Wesley Beck says of the opener being a conference clash. “I've been thinking about TCU since last spring.”
      
 The Lobos, apparently, have been on the Horned Frogs' minds as well.
      
 “Coaches will get that drilled into our heads (that UNM is first on the schedule),” sophomore quarterback Andy Dalton told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on the eve of TCU's fall practice schedule. “Not that it hasn't been already.”
       
The MWC had two possible dates for the Lobos-Frogs matchup when it made the schedule in the spring: the first week of December or the first game of the season.
      
 “I'd rather play it first if it meant that UNM was going to have an off week and then play us,” TCU coach Gary Patterson says.
       
Patterson says his program is used to playing emotional season openers, having played the likes of Oklahoma and in-state rival Baylor the past few years.
       
“For us, winning and losing those ballgames are a big deal for us, as far as getting recruits,” Patterson says. “And that's your lifeline. I would say preparing for New Mexico is like that because there's a lot more at stake than a win or a loss.”
       
Patterson says he thinks a win will be a bigger positive for the victor than a defeat will be a negative for the loser.
       
“I think it helps you, win-wise,” Patterson says. “I'm not sure it hurts you because there's still a lot of football left to play, and as a coach you're more interested in what you have to do to get better the next week.”
      
 Long agrees — to a point.
       
“I don't think if you win or lose, that's going to determine where you end up in the standings,” he says. “But it's not like playing a nonconference game. You can get a lot of positives out of a nonconference game preparing for conference play and still lose.
      
 “There won't be any positives out of the TCU game if we don't win.”
      
 EXTRA POINT: Louis Beal, a freshman transfer from Dodge City (Kan.) Community College who signed with UNM in the summer, will miss at least a week of practice to resolve an academic matter.