It’s November and that only means one thing. It’s time for Aggie basketball. The season officially started Monday, Nov. 4, with the New Mexico Highlands Cowboys visiting the Pan American Center to begin coach Jason Hooten’s second season. Even though the Cowboys played hard until the final whistle, the Aggies were just too much to handle.
The theme of the night quickly became domination, as the score ballooned to a 37-15 lead in the Aggies favor. That trend continued into halftime with no double digit scoring in sight for the Cowboys. The Cowboys Kenard Richardson racked up 14 points in the game.
Most notably, every Aggie got playing time in the game as the challenge for the Aggies became getting the biggest lead possible in the second half. For the cowboys, one of their goals in the game was to make the score somewhat respectable.
The Aggies quest to 100 points was going just as planned, with forward Robert Carpenter getting the lead to 30 with his back-to-back three pointers to get his game point total of 18 points. Carpenter was the team leader in points scored and commented on it after the game.
“I always stay humble,” he said. “You know, a lot of times when my shot is on, I’m going to see it through. But I try to support the other guys and shoot more shots and trust the process…you know they say shooters keep shooting.”
Coach Hooten also appreciated Carpenter’s contributions.
“When he does that, you just got to keep going to him,” Hooten said. “That one he made over in the corner, in front of our bench. I mean he wasn’t even facing the basket and he made it. When guys can do that, as a coach, it makes you look good.”
The team not only made coach Hooten look good, they made him look great. Three Aggies got into the double-digit point arena including, Zawdie Jackson (14 points), Christian Cook (15 points), and Dionte Bostick (12 points). As the game progressed, the score grew to 70, then 80, then 90, before Hooten finally called off the dogs and put in the substitutes.
Most importantly, the 2024 season opener was the first time true freshman Gabe Pickens got some playing time in the Pan Am.
What made his debut even better was scoring his first career points, finishing with seven points in his 16 minutes on the court. That was something he was excited about after the game.
“Honestly, I’d say it was just a surreal moment just being out there,” Pickens said “I feel like just how hard I’ve been working in practice; I was just ready for the moment. I really enjoyed being out there with the guys today.”
Even though Carpenter said while the team’s chemistry and communication improved over last year, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Both players pointed out mistakes they were able to get away with tonight but will not when it comes time to play tougher competition.
“Turnovers,” Pickens said. “Limit those. Like here we had 26…that’s crazy.”
“Yeah, I say even the rebounding,” Carpenter then said. “It’s a smaller team, we should’ve killed them on the boards…because we could be playing better competition.”
One of the keys missing Aggies in the season opener was Peter Filipovity, who is dealing with a herniated disk. Filipovity’s absence was something coach Hooten went further into detail regarding the decision to keep him off the court.
“I kind of really thought he might play tonight,” Hooten said. “Then practice didn’t go quite as well yesterday on the recovery that we wanted and we sat down and we made an intelligent decision between me and him and the trainer and the doctor.”
Hooten also mentioned that moving forward in the season will determine who plays and for how long.
“I told them tonight, I don’t know right now what our rotation is and how many minutes each guy is going to play,” Hooten said. “I tell our guys every day, you determine your playing time and right now you’ll probably have to determine your playing time in practice…I always taught that you got to make the coach play you, and you got to do enough and do something to make the coach play you.”
The Aggies next game is on the road for their Conference USA / Western Athletic Conference challenge game on Saturday Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. against Utah Tech. While ESPN+ will not broadcast the game, you can still follow the Aggies by tuning into 104.9 FM.
