SI:AM | New Mexico State’s Men’s Basketball Mess

Plus, Afghanistan’s Ironwoman.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland, back from a weekend trip. If you thought the Super Bowl ads were lame here, they were worse in Canada, where I watched the game.

In today’s SI:AM:

​​🏀 ​​Greg Heiar’s inevitable ouster

🇦🇫 From Kabul to Colorado

⚾ Why baseball is about to get more entertaining

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A mid-major power in turmoil

The New Mexico State men’s basketball program—a March Madness fixture over the past decade with nine NCAA tournament appearances since 2010—is in shambles.

The school suspended the program Sunday, ending its season after 24 games following allegations of hazing made by at least one player. A player filed a report with campus police alleging that on Feb. 6 three players held him down, and, according to the report, “removed his clothing, exposing his buttocks and began to slap his [buttocks]. He also went on to state that they also touched his scrotum.”

The alleged hazing is the second troubling incident involving Aggies players this season. On Nov. 19, while the team was on the road for a game against New Mexico, junior forward Mike Peake allegedly shot and killed a 19-year-old UNM student in what has been described as an act of self-defense. According to police, Peake was lured to a UNM dorm, where he was met by a woman and three male students with whom he had previously had an altercation at a football game. One man hit Peake with a baseball bat. Another, 19-year-old Brandon Travis, shot Peake in the leg and Peake returned fire. Travis was struck four times and died at the scene.

Surveillance video shows that, after Peake was shot, he met three teammates and put items in the trunk of a car. The gun used in the shooting was reportedly found with an assistant coach at the team hotel. A detective pulled over the team bus as it was leaving campus and found Peake’s cellphone in the possession of a school administrator and his tablet in the possession of an assistant coach.

The two incidents paint a picture of a program with a leadership void, Pat Forde writes:

Beyond the sheer tragedy of the situation, the fact that Peake had a gun on a road trip and that as many as four of the Aggies skipped curfew and were out at 3 a.m. raised significant doubts about the leadership of the program. Those doubts were heightened when, police said, New Mexico State assistant coaches wound up in possession of Peake’s gun and tablet.

Forde believes the scandals should and will spell the end of head coach Greg Heiar’s tenure in Las Cruces. This is his first season in charge after being hired to replace Chris Jans, who left after five years to take over at Mississippi State. It could also jeopardize athletic director Mario Moccia’s position, since he was the one who decided to hire Heiar. The coach was very successful at the junior college level, winning a juco national championship last year with Northwest Florida State, but as an assistant at the Division I level, he worked under three head coaches (Larry Eustachy, Gregg Marshall and Will Wade) who were dismissed for their own off-court controversies.

​​There is no evidence that suggests Heiar learned from those three coaches how to run a renegade program. But if a person’s reputation is in part accrued by the company he keeps, well, Heiar’s arrival at New Mexico State should have come with warning signs flashing. His inevitable departure will come after two police investigations in a single season shut down his program.

Getting the program back on track will be a tough task, but firing Heiar is the obvious first step.

The best of Sports Illustrated

• Today’s Daily Cover, by Joseph Bien-Khan, is the harrowing story of Zeinab Rezaie, the first Afghan woman to finish an Ironman 70.3:

The night before Kabul fell, Rezaie and her family had been glued to the chaos on the news, and in the early morning, as she and her husband, Ali Karimi, drove toward the city center on the way to the airport, their new reality became clear. Everything was suddenly different. Afghanistan’s capital had always bustled with commuters at this early hour. Now it was nearly deserted. Storefronts were shuttered. Only the bearded young men from the mountains, with their big guns, walked the streets. “The face of the city was changed,” Rezaie says.

• Breaking news: The Colts named Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen as their new head coach this morning.
• Albert Breer previews this offseason’s quarterback carousel, with Derek Carr as the centerpiece.
• Tom Verducci has a bunch of stats that explain why the ban on the shift will make baseball much more exciting.
• Jimmy Traina was impressed with how Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen called the Super Bowl.
• Louisville will hang a banner with some creative wording to get around the NCAA vacating its 2013 national championship.
• Mike Brey says he’s not retiring after he leaves Notre Dame at the end of the season.
• Alabama is the new No. 1 in the men’s AP poll, the first time the Tide have claimed the top spot in 20 years.

• South Carolina is No. 1 in the women’s poll for the 34th week in a row.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. The Sami Zayn–Cody Rhodes segment on Monday Night Raw.

4. Jalen Brunson’s 40 points as the Knicks beat the Nets for the first time since Jan. 26, 2020.

3. Matias Maccelli’s spinning backhand assist.

2. Texas Tech’s hard-fought upset over Texas in Lubbock.

1. The Senators’ comeback against the Flames. Ottawa scored twice in a span of 46 seconds with the net empty late in the third to force overtime. Then Tim Stützle netted the winner in the extra period.

SIQ

On this day in 2010, the NBA All-Star Game set a record for the largest crowd ever in attendance for a basketball game when it was played at what stadium?

• AT&T Stadium
• Ford Field
• Superdome
• NRG Stadium

Yesterday’s SIQ: On this day in 1920, Black baseball team owners met at a YMCA in which city to found the Negro National League?

• St. Louis
• Kansas City
• Chicago
• Atlanta

Answer: Kansas City. The league was the idea of Andrew “Rube” Foster, who cofounded a Black team, the Chicago American Giants, in 1911. But, according to the Hall of Fame, while teams of Black players attracted large crowds, team owners and players saw very little of that ticket revenue, because the games were controlled by white booking agents.

Foster’s solution was to collaborate with other Black team owners to create a new league. He began pushing for the idea in 1919 in a series of columns written for the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper. On Feb. 13, 1920, Foster and other owners met at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City, Mo., to discuss the possibility of a new league. To everyone else’s surprise, Foster showed up with a charter document for the Negro National League ready for the other men to sign.

The league began with teams in Chicago, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City and St. Louis, and inspired other Negro Leagues around the country.

Foster managed the American Giants to four NNL pennants before he died in 1930. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in ’81.