Lobo guard Uriah Tenette is ready to prove himself

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Uriah Tenette is driven.

The 5-foot-10 UNM Lobos freshman point guard seems to have a deeply engrained desire to keep moving toward a made-up destination; a finish line, of sorts, that keeps moving further away.

The guy who was too small to be a football star became a multi-year, playoff-winning all-state starting quarterback in Prescott, Arizona.

The guy who was too small to star in a sport dominated by players with height, landed a Division I scholarship after scoring 2,752 points in high school and more than holding his own with the top-ranked recruits in the country.

The guy who was too small to ever be ready as a true freshman for big minutes as a college player, won his team's preseason dunk contest at the Lobo Howl, averaged more than 10 points a game and led a 26-win NIT semifinalists team in plus/minus stats this season (UNM outscored opponents more with Tenette on the floor than any other player on the roster).

He proved he belongs.

And as the keys to the Lobo basketball team have been given to him to be the program's point guard leader heading into his sophomore season, Tenette says he hasn't proven anything yet.

"Me and my dad have conversations about it like, I need to get on a whole other level," Tenette said after announcing on Tuesday he's coming back to UNM next season — an announcement that is now a part of a basketball circle of life that centers around whether players are coming or going.

This past season, Tenette averaged 10.6 points, 2.8 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.4 steals. His 3.09 assist-to-turnover ratio ranked in the 98th percentile of players in all 365 Division I teams.

For Tenette, proving he belongs has now turned into proving he's worthy of the faith head coach Eric Olen has put in him to lead the program from a nice Year 1 to an even better Year 2.

"I made it to this level," Tenette said. "We're still trying to strive for more. So learning to be that leader this summer, not being a freshman, not being the rookie out there, but just being that team leader is something I really gotta work on. I just want to be better tomorrow than I was today."

The NCAA's transfer portal opened Tuesday morning — the official start to the most hectic few weeks of the new college basketball recruiting cycle where players who announce they are transferring can be openly contacted and recruited by other schools with the lure of big money, expanded opportunities and bigger roles.

While there is no requirement to announce you're staying — it's essentially an announcement of nothing changing — it is something that has grown into a bit of necessity in an era where roster turnover has grown from a couple players leaving per season to entire rosters at times. (Lobo fans certainly don’t need a reminder of that fact after this past season featured an entirely new roster and coaching staff from what was here just over 12 months ago.)

As for that recruiting process, Tenette was asked in a Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday which schools contacted him about transferring. As he never actually entered the portal, any such contact between him and another school would have been an NCAA violation, and he did say there was none.

"It was never my decision to want to go in the portal or anything, I just wanted to stay," Tenette said.

But that doesn't mean there wasn't a clear understanding between UNM and Tenette based on his stellar play — and poise at a position that sometimes lacks it for far too many college teams — that the offers would be there once the portal opened.

It is unclear what UNM is paying Tenette to return, and UNM has taken a stance that it won't release such information despite revenue sharing being done with public money. But nobody is playing naive that it was part of the process.

"The new day and age of college basketball — everybody wants to go on the portal, wants to go find more money and stuff like that — everybody has unique situations," Tenette said. "But, my situation with UNM, they gave me the money where I wanted to stay. I think this is the best decision me and my family came up with. I love the fans, and I love playing in the Pit and this was the right position for me."

Whether that will also be the decision of his freshman backcourt mate Jake Hall is unclear.

Dax Hall, Jake's younger brother who has been offered a scholarship by UNM, has an official recruiting visit in Albuquerque this weekend.

Jake Hall, the All-Mountain West First Team honoree, MW Freshman of the Year and Lobos leading scorer, has made clear he wants Dax Hall to be given the opportunity to make his own path. The brothers have both told the Journal they'd love to play together (they did not in high school), but for now, big brother is happy to take a step back and let his brother get the UNM recruitment treatment without his decision overshadowing anything.

As for Tenette, he and Jake Hall are friends first, teammates second. College players, while taking plenty of heat and criticism in recent years from the people outside their locker room walls for taking advantage of the system that now gives them unprecedented opportunities, have almost universally taken the same united front in supporting each other no matter what the decision.

"He and I haven't really talked recently, but we've talked about it before," Tenette said when basically asked if he was recruiting Jake Hall. "You know any decision that he makes, I'm going to support him."

Reach Geoff Grammer at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.