Cruces Sports

By Lucas Peerman
Production Editor
It doesn¹t take a genius to know the New Mexico State front court must step up in today¹s game against Boise State to give the Aggies any chance of going to the Big Dance.

What may be less apparent is the fact that the Aggies with Hatila Passos are to the Aggies with Martin Iti as Fred Astaire is to Nick Fazekas. What I mean by that, is one of them is gonna take you the Dance, the other is gonna trip over his two left feet.

Let me explain, statistically.

For the first two games of the WAC Tournament, I have recorded the over/under for each Aggie player. That stat tells you how well a team performs when that player is in the game. There are numerous other factors that control the outcome of the game to read too much into the statistic, but it does give a good perspective into how a player affects the play of the team.

For example, in the Aggies¹ 73-53 victory over Idaho on Thursday, the team outscored the Vandals by 21 points when Justin Hawkins was in the game. Hawk had an over/under of +21. In blowouts like the Idaho game, however, it¹s hard to get a valuable over/under because there¹s so much “garbage time” when the points don¹t matter. In fact, every Aggie who played significant minutes had a positive over/under against the Vandals.

Except for one.

Martin Iti recorded a -2. You read that right. The Idaho Vandals (horrible team) outscored the New Mexico State Aggies (most talented team in the WAC) by 2 points when Iti, the reserve center, was in the game. Passos, the starting center, recorded a +25, the highest mark of any player. You can see the rest of the results from that game below.
As I noted above, however, it¹s hard to get an accurate read in a blowout. Let¹s take a look instead at Friday¹s game, a much more competitive 83-75 Aggies¹ win over Nevada.

Once again, Passos was the most valuable Aggie according to over/under numbers with a +22. That was 12 points better the next player (Fred Peete and Hawkins were both +10). Iti, as he was against the Vandals, was the least valuable player in the Nevada game. He recorded an astounding -14, including a -10 in a second half in which the Aggies as a team outscored the Wolf Pack by 10 points.

NMSU outscored Nevada 57-35 when Passos was in the game. Nevada outscored NMSU 40-26 when Iti was in the game. Each player was in the game about the same number of minutes (Passos played 21 minutes, Iti 19. There was no point at which either player was not in the game or in the game at the same time).

When Passos was in the game versus Nevada, the Aggies scored 2.71 points a minute and gave up 1.66 points a minute. When Iti was in the game, the Aggies scored 1.37 points a minute and gave up 2.11 points a minute. Quite a
discrepancy there. For all you stat geeks out there, here¹s the numbers, with over/under numbers for the first half, the second half and the (game in parentheses)

New Mexico State 73, Idaho 53
Jonathan Gibson, +11, +5 (+16)
Fred Peete, +12, +10 (+22)
Justin Hawkins, +11, +10 (+21)
Herb Pope, +14, +6 (+20)
Hatila Passos, +17, +8 (+25)
Jahmar Young, 0, +8 (+8)
Wendell McKines, -3, +6 (+3)
Martin Iti, -6, +4 (-2)
J.D. Luster, DNP, -3 (-3)
Trei Stward, DNP, -3 (-3)
Gordo Castillo, DNP, -3 (-3)
DeAngelo Jones, DNP, -3 (-3)

New Mexico State 83, Nevada 75
Jonathan Gibson, +4, -3 (+1)
Fred Peete, -2, +12 (+10)
Justin Hawkins, -3, +13 (+10)
Herb Pope, -7, +7 (0)
Hatila Passos, +2, +20 (+22)
Jahmar Young, -5, +11 (+6)
Wendell McKines, +3, +3 (+6)
Martin Iti, -4, -10 (-14)
J.D. Luster, DNP
Trei Steward, DNP
Gordo Castill, DNP
DeAngelo Jones, DNP

As I said earlier, there are many, many factors that affect a player¹s over/under rating that he cannot control, such as the play of his teammates and the play of his teammates¹ opponents. However, with Passos and Iti splitting time evenly against the Wolf Pack (meaning neither player was saddled with horrible teammates the entire game), the discrepancy between Passos¹ and Iti¹s numbers are that much more glaring.

Let¹s hope Passos, Pope and McKines (and maybe even Steward) get the majority of the minutes down low against the Broncos if the Aggies want to have any chance of putting on their dancing shoes.