Little Rock vs New Mexico prediction: Fourteen new Trojans head into The Pit to face Jake Hall

Little Rock starts from scratch

New Mexico has almost no film on this opponent. Little Rock comes to The Pit with 14 new players, one returner and a first-year coach in Travis Ford. That makes this less a scouting exercise than a test of whether a group of mid-major transfers can find each other on the road.

Players on the Trojans' current roster logged just 2.2% of the program's minutes last season. The lone returner, forward Terrion Burgess, played six games. Little Rock's 12-20 record last season describes a team that no longer exists. So does its final adjusted net efficiency (points per 100 possessions, adjusted for opponents), which ranked 310th of 365.

The new core comes from elsewhere. Bradyn Hubbard averaged 16.2 points at Abilene Christian. His usage rate of 31.8% meant nearly a third of his team's possessions ended with him. Aaron Clark scored 15.2 a game at Pepperdine, and Jah'Likai King added 14.0 at UMBC, which gives Ford two more guards used to having the ball.

The first look was rough. Little Rock lost 69-49 in an Oct. 16 exhibition at Kentucky, Ford's alma mater, in his first game in charge. A Taj Walters three and a King jumper got the deficit to single digits late in the first half. This game is the Trojans' third of the regular season. Their opener at VCU is on Nov. 2.

Jake Hall is the constant

New Mexico reshuffled too: returners account for 32.5% of last season's minutes. But the Lobos kept the player who matters most. Jake Hall made 43.8% of his 267 three-point attempts last season. His effective field goal percentage (threes count 1.5 times) was 61.7%.

Hall looked the part in exhibition play. He scored 22 points against Washington State on Oct. 18, and the Lobos won 92-64. A week earlier they beat Oklahoma State 99-89.

Eric Olen's newcomers add efficient scoring around him. Tunde Vahlberg Fasasi averaged 11.8 points at William & Mary. Hudson Mayes posted a 56.8% effective field goal percentage at UC San Diego. The biggest hole is inside. Tomislav Buljan, who averaged 10.3 rebounds, left for Maryland. Last season New Mexico finished 26-11 and second in the Mountain West.

Open threes are hard to find

Last season's Lobo defense dared teams to shoot from deep, and they missed. Opponents took 47.8% of their shots from three, the eighth-highest share in the country. They made only 30.2% of them, which ranked 18th.

That is a problem for Little Rock's high-volume transfers. Hubbard shot 31.3% from three last season and King shot 32.2%. Walters is the exception at 38.3%, and the Trojans will likely need him to make a few early to keep New Mexico's defense honest. If the newcomers settle for contested jumpers, this lines up the way New Mexico's defense wants it to.

Health and the frontcourt

Two Lobo forwards carry question marks. Rytis Petraitis, a California transfer, sat out the Oct. 18 exhibition with an ankle issue and was listed as day-to-day. Freshman Nate Muriithi missed the same game with an undisclosed injury and wore street clothes at warmups. Neither status had been updated as of Oct. 18. With Buljan gone, New Mexico has little margin in the frontcourt.

No injuries have surfaced for Little Rock. The bigger unknown for the Trojans is chemistry, and three games may not be enough time for a new roster to build much of it.