Men's head basketball coach Marvin Menzies is on Twitter. You can follow him by visiting his Twitter page.

Team USA defeated Mexico 55-0 last night to advance to the gold medal game of the Junior World Championships versus Canada. James Hall Jr. rushed for four yards on three attempts. The gold medal game will be played on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Fanhouse reports that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee has eliminated the "Last 12 Games" statistic from its selection criteria.

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Three members of the NM State swimming and diving team that finished 3rd at the WAC Championships this past spring are trying to make their respective national teams. Alannah Lawrence of the diving team will head to Indianapolis to try out for the U.S. National Team and Tessa Bain of the swim team will head to Montreal to try to earn a spot on the Canadian National Team. Maria Spies, the first Aggie swimmer to ever compete at the NCAA Championships (done so as a freshman) competed in Berlin at the German World Championship Trials and finished 11th.

The swimming and diving team under the direction of head coach Rick Pratt recorded their best conference finish in the WAC with a third place finish and were in contention for championship with three events remaining. The Aggies also defeated I-25 rival New Mexico for the second consecutive season after having not beaten the Lobos in the pool for over 25 years.

The athletic department and individual programs have made a concerted effort, particularly in recent years, of being a part of the community and one of those coaches who is making his mark is Aggie head men's basketball coach Marvin Menzies. Coach Menzies attended a Jardín de los Niños news conference where it was announced that the center received $50,000 in funding, including a private donation of $20,000 from Aggie booster Stan Fulton. Coach Menzies told the press that the Aggie men's basketball team plans on spending some of its time helping perform repairs and other work at the center. Kudos to Coach Menzies and the team for having a positive impact on the community.

Finally, as you're aware, we've had a strange fixation on marketing slogans as of late and our friend Tombo Ahi at the always excellent Warriors Will Throw football blog reports on the marketing slogan recently unveiled for the University of Hawai'i. While it's certainly better than Stanford's and UTEP's (thanks Mel) it's still not quite as good as the one produced by NM State's Steve Macy and the marketing staff.

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If you recall last week the WAC received an $85,000 grant from the NCAA to help promote women's basketball. We thought that was pretty impressive, until we saw this... the University of Hartford will receive $50,000 of that same grant money. Kind of takes the shine off that $85,000 that a nine team conference is receiving ($9,444 if split equally between the nine members). We're not generally in the business of being sour but we're just scratching our heads a little bit after finding out that one school received almost 60% as much as a nine team conference did. (Apparently Hartford wrote a better proposal than the WAC did).

On to some much more cheerful news. Future Aggie running back James Hall Jr. rushed for 53 yards on seven attempts and scored one touchdown in the USA's 78-0 pasting of the French. Tam USA will face Team Mexico tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. CDT. (we think it's a Central start time). The game will be streamed online for free so here's your chance to see James Hall Jr. in action.

Tough economic times have hit FIU's college football experience. The University (former conference mates of the Aggies in the Sun Belt) have decided to ELIMINATE the marching band and cheerleaders (as in cut the programs). FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! How can you have college football without the marching band and cheerleaders? (Could you imagine an Aggie game without The Pride, Sundancers and Jessica Franklin's outstanding cheer squad? Neither can we!) Well, the cheerleaders have taken it upon themselves to save their program and are doing so in the exact way the one would expect. By holding a Bikini Carwash. (That should make up for us raining on the WAC's grant parade).

We generally try to stay away from sticky subjects but we ran across an article that we think every fan of college athletics should read. We'll just say that it deals with race and college athletics but not in the way you probably think.

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The women's basketball program is in Farmington today and tomorrow for their annual basketball camp. The Aggies have built a good rapport with the folks in the four corners and is a part of the renewed overall outreach that the NM State athletic department has done since 2005. Between the football summer camps in Gallup from 2005 through last season, to the annual Albuquerque golf tournament and fundraising event, the Aggies are making every effort to put their stamp on the state.

Teddy Feinberg of the Las Cruces Sun-News blogs his ranking of the quarterbacks in the WAC. The list is solid. As he points out, the top two quarterbacks in the league are definitely BSU's Kellen Moore and Nevada's Colin Kaepernick. We'd throw Greg Alexander from Hawai'i into the Sure Thing category. Once Hawai'i settled on a starter last season, that being Alexander, they really started to do well. Unfortunately one of those good games from Alexander came against the Aggies last season (288 passing yards, two passing TDs, 66 rushing yards, one rushing TD).

Finally, Teddy Feinberg talks about the athletic department's goal of selling 10,000 season tickets this year

We finally got the pictures from the First Annual Summer Spectacular and BBQ Picnic up yesterday evening (but still yesterday by our clock here in Alaska). Thanks to Mel for taking the pictures and passing them along.

Think coming up with a marketing slogan is easy? Apparently not so much. The Aggies have had a couple of good ones the last two years, last year it was Every Day Is Gameday, this year it's We Are All Crimson. Well it isn't so easy for those brainiacs in Palo Alto, CA (home of the Stanford Cardinal) where they came up with this doozy... We Work. Yep, that's it. We Work. On top of it not making a whole lot of sense, apparently it's angered the unemployed as well.

The next time you see NM State Associate A.D. (and head of NM State's Athletic Marketing Dept.) Steve Macy pat him on the back for coming up with good marketing slogans for the University because apparently it's harder than it looks (or at least hard enough to confound the geniuses at Stanford).

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Our Aggie volleyball fanatic Mel ventured out to the first annual Aggie Summer Spectacular and BBQ put on for the Aggie football team. There were approximately 150 to 175 people in attendance and has written in with a report.

The warm weather didn't keep the Aggie faithful away from the 1st Annual Football Spectacular, hosted by Beth Marr of Steinborn Real Estate at Brigid's Pub. On hand were the players and coaching staff as well as VB Coach Mike Jordan, Mens BB Coach Marvin Menzies and Womens Soccer Coach Mike Needham.

Coach Walker made the rounds, meeting and greeting the fans and talking about the upcoming season. The players circulated as well before being let loose on the amazing BBQ. I don't know how they held out until the fans were fed. Having had the chance to talk to a couple of players, I could tell that they are excited about the season and are ready to 'get it done'.

The staff will be tallying the attendance and money raised this weekend and we'll let you know the numbers. Suffice to say it was a good crowd with a few new faces who are season ticket holders for the first time.

If you've not gotten your season tickets yet, get them now. This is a season you do not want to miss!

Oh - and while you're down at the ticket office getting those season tickets, pick some up for soccer.

We'll have photos from the event taken by Mel up later today.

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More thoughts from the WAC moving the men's and women's basketball championship tournament to Las Vegas. Teddy Feinberg of the Las Cruces Sun-News thinks that moving the tournament to a neutral site will cause the tournament to lose some of its charm, personality and college atmosphere. We disagree. Some of the best conference tournaments are held on neutral courts. The Missouri Valley Conference tournament immediately comes to mind. The MVC, one of the best mid-major conferences, host their championship tournament annually in St. Louis. They've built a brand calling it Arch Madness and have seen some incredibly exciting tournament games that have exemplified the college atmosphere. The Big East conference tournament is annually held at Madison Square Garden in New York, also a neutral site. As is the ACC, Mountain West, Pac 10, SEC.

Second, he makes the argument that he doesn't see a lot of La. Tech or Idaho fans (among others) making the trek to Vegas to watch their team. Here's the flaw in his thought process. Would Aggie fans (or any other casual fans) really travel to Moscow or Logan or Ruston to watch the WAC tournament? We think fans are much more likely to go to an easy access location like Las Vegas over a remote location like Moscow (where you have to fly to somewhere like Spokane and then drive to Moscow) or Ruston (fly to either Dallas or somewhere in Louisiana and then drive to Ruston) or even Las Cruces (there was a noticeable decline in fans from other schools in year two of the WAC tourney in Las Cruces).

We like the move to Vegas (just like we like the volleyball move to Vegas and the baseball move to Mesa) but it will be interesting to see if the rest of the WAC fans think the same way and show up.

Don't forget to stop by today's Aggie Football Summer Spectacular and BBQ. It starts at 5:30 p.m., call Beth Marr at 575-496-1848 to get your tickets.

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The big news of yesterday was of course the WAC basketball tournament heading to Las Vegas for two years in 2011 and 2012. Good idea? Bad idea? Only time will tell but it's what the coaches (and we presume the players) have been asking for. The good news for WAC fans is that Vegas is a pretty easy place to get to so hopefully fan turnout will be higher than if the tournament is held on campus sites. Plus, unless you're like us and are basketball junkies and will watch every minute of both the men's and women's tournaments, you're probably not going to sit in the gym the entire four days from the quarterfinals to the finals. Vegas provides plenty of extracurricular activities, including ones that don't involve gambling (we threw that one in there for the NCAA).

LSU defeated Texas 12-4 last night in the College World Series to win the Division I national championship. With LSU's win college sports are now in hibernation until football and volleyball (among others) start back up in the fall.

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