It was Dec. 8, 1999, in Las Cruces.
The first taste of the Rio Grande Rivalry for first-year University of New Mexico men’s basketball coach Fran Fraschilla going against Lou Henson-coached New Mexico State and its star senior point guard Billy Keys.
“Every time he had the ball on our side of the court, I kept telling my guards, ‘Force him left! Force him left!’ We had decided that he couldn’t go left,” Fraschilla recalls of the scouting report on Keys.
The Aggies wound up winning a close game that night while the Lobos went on a couple weeks later to knock off No.