New Mexico-New Mexico State just became one of college basketball’s most interesting rivalries

Rick Pitino may have coached both Kentucky and Louisville, but at least there was a stint with the Boston Celtics sandwiched in between the two rivals.

There will be no such partition for Paul Weir, the 37-year-old Toronto native who was confirmed to be New Mexico’s new head basketball coach Tuesday morning. This comes on the heels of Weir’s debut season as a head coach, in which he led New Mexico State to a 28-6 record and an appearance in the NCAA tournament.

Not that Weir wasn’t familiar with basketball in the “Land of Enchantment” before 2016-17. He had spent the previous nine seasons as an assistant coach at NMSU under Marvin Menzies, who left to take the head coaching job at UNLV last spring.

“I’m very excited to name Paul Weir as our 21st head men’s basketball coach,” New Mexico athletic director Paul Krebs said in a release Tuesday morning. “In conducting this search, his was a name that was on our radar from the beginning. I was able to see many of their games this season, and Paul is a bright young mind in the game. His teams play with tremendous passion and energy. They are tenacious defensively and on the glass and his student-athletes have been great citizens and representatives. I have no doubt that those qualities will translate to our program and will resonate with our fan base.

“The fact that Paul has been in New Mexico for the past 11 years gives him an incredible knowledge of our state and the significance of Lobo Basketball throughout our state. We welcome his lovely wife Alma, a New Mexico native, and his son Theodore to the Lobo Family.”

At New Mexico, Weir will replace Craig Neal, who was fired after four seasons in which he produced a 76-52 overall record and only made the NCAA tournament in year one. The two men worked together on Steve Alford’s staff at Iowa in the mid-2000s.

While the hiring of Weir has produced some expected back-and-forth rivalry banter on social media, it has also shined a brighter light on some of the issues currently befalling the New Mexico State athletic program.

Of the 63 NCAA tournament participants who publicly reported their head coach’s salary, Weir was just the 55th highest-paid at $250,000. It’s a fact that former NMSU regent Bob Gallagher sounded off about when the rumors about Weir potentially jumping ship first began to surface.

”If in fact a contract is agreed to tonight or tomorrow for Paul Weir to be the next head coach at the University of New Mexico, the blame needs to be very loud and very swiftly placed on the head of the NMSU Board of Regents and President Garrey Carruthers,” Gallagher said. “They have shown a total lack of support for not only Coach Weir, but all athletics. And in a $600 million budget, to suggest that you could not find $250,000 dollars to be able to keep and retain a coach who has dedicated the last ten years of his life to NMSU is a sad, sad scenario.

“Their arrogance in not wanting to accept the fact and the role that athletics plays at a university, the amazing comparison is UNM is paying a $1 million buyout of their former head coach and is prepared to pay $700-800,000 a year for this new coach. They don’t have a president right now, and they have a virtually lame duck athletic director. The governor is calling the shots. And the fact that we cannot come up with $250,000 dollars in an over $600 million budget is an absolute black eye to the entire country about the leadership of NMSU.”

Losing Weir to an arch rival is an especially bitter pill to swallow for an Aggie fan base that saw firsthand this season how promising his future might be.

Under Weir’s direction, New Mexico State defeated New Mexico in Las Cruces for the first time in eight years. The Aggies also produced a 20-game win streak that included their first true road win over a power conference opponent (Arizona State) in two decades. The season ended with a WAC tournament championship, and a loss to Baylor in the first round of the Big Dance in a game where they led by two at halftime.

Weir’s 28 wins were the most of any first-year head coach in Division I, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that at least a couple of potential suitors came calling this spring. But this suitor? The one despised more than any other by his previous employer? Yeah, that’s going to make some waves. That doesn’t mean the move is difficult to understand.

At New Mexico, Weir is walking into a situation that features more money, better facilities, a stronger conference, and one of the more rabid college basketball fan bases in the Southwest. He’s also walking into a new role as the central figure in a rivalry that just got infinitely more interesting to the rest of the country.