Like father, like son.

Ben Wolfe isn't about to miss any of his son Noah's basketball games.

He's in the bleachers, yelling like most proud fathers do, at every game. He'll be around for a few more seasons: Younger son Eiljah, a freshman, is also a basketball player. That paragraph is easy to understand. The next one isn't, when you learn about the intricacies of this year's Rams varsity.

Ben Wolfe, 45, played two seasons of varsity basketball at Los Lunas, where a man named Rudy Aragon was a first-year coach of the Tigers in Wolfe's senior season. Rudy Aragon's son Isaac is a teammate of Noah Wolfe's.

Still with me? Then try this: Ben Wolfe is an uncle of Rams head coach Brian Smith's wife Kristi; her father, Robert Wolfe, is Ben's older brother.

Rudy Aragon, who also coached varsity teams at Penasco High before becoming first an assistant principal at Rio Rancho High and then an assistant director of the New Mexico Activities Association, often sits near Ben Wolfe in the bleachers and, of course, remembered him from his days as a Tiger.

"Ben was All-State," Aragon said of the LLHS Class of 1979 athlete. "Ben was an excellent basketball player; he could score inside as well as outside."

Wolfe was also an All-District 5AAA selection; he set school records, since broken, of 23 points a game for a season and 41 points in a game.

Although he was a rookie coach in the 1978-79 season, Aragon found himself faced with a tough decision when a handful of players violated team rules and had to be disciplined.

"We lost six kids to disciplinary actions; Ben took control," Aragon said. "He always had an excellent attitude and he played with passion.

"To tell you the truth, he was a lot like Noah."

Like his son, Ben Wolfe also played varsity football. Unlike his son, he also played baseball, pitching and playing third base for the Tigers. Born and raised in Los Lunas, Wolfe played most sports but liked basketball best, and first played in an organized league when he was in seventh grade.

"I didn't think of myself as being tall," he said, although he grew to a height of 6-4 and played center on the court.

"Rudy was pretty intense," Wolfe said. "He was young; he was definitely intense. He liked to push the ball."

After graduation, Wolfe headed to Cochise College in Douglas, Ariz., to further his hoops career.

At the time, the University of New Mexico basketball program was being devastated by what was called "Lobogate."

"I thought, 'If there was a time to do it, that was it,'" Wolfe recalled. He returned to New Mexico and walked on to the UNM team, by then being coached by Gary Colson, with former coach Norm Ellenberger a victim of the Lobogate wreckage.

Wolfe didn't see much action at UNM, where the irony - a "Wolfe" playing as a "Lobo," Spanish for wolf - was somehow lost by the school's marketing department.

He wore No. 40 and played in nine games, and had six points in a victory over Air Force. Nobody has been able to top his single-season free-throw shooting percentage, 100 percent, as Wolfe sank all eight of his free-throw attempts in the 1980-81 season.

"Ben was a walk-on and, it was a time when it was right after Lobogate and we needed some players to walk on and Ben made it through and really helped us, in a sense for practice and things like that," recalled Bob Lamphier, then an assistant coach at UNM. "He was valuable in that aspect when we needed players.

"Ben was what I'd consider a good, all-around player (and) he had a good attitude," Lamphier added. "He wasn't, in the sense we know it, a great player. He was a good player ... He didn't cause any problems; he was good in a sense of what we had at the time."

"It was a good experience," Wolfe said of his year in The Pit, although the team went 11-15 overall and 6-10 in its Western Athletic Conference games.

"I went in knowing I wouldn't play a lot. I was happy. I learned a lot, got stronger."

Wolfe worked hard to prepare himself for what he expected to be another season as a reserve, but realized Colson was focused on playing his own recruits.

"You've got to play scholarship players," Wolfe rationalized of Colson's second year at the helm.

The 1980-81 season was also the lone year played at UNM by Wallace Williams; he transferred to Eastern New Mexico University.

That didn't mean it was right, merely the politics of life.

It wasn't the first time Wolfe would feel wronged.

"He told me he had to play his recruits," Wolfe said and, after seeing very little time on the court in two exhibition games, the writing was on the wall and Wolfe left the team.

"That's one of my pet peeves," he said. "The guys that get out and earn it should play. I've just always been that way."

Wolfe continued his studies for a while, began working at General Electric, then left there after a few years to finish up his degree work. He got a job teaching physical education and became the Los Lunas High School girls basketball coach.

"I started a youth basketball league down there," he said. "We had kids five years old playing, kids like (former LLHS star and current Metro State player) Paige Powers."

By then, there was a little Wolfe prowling around the Tigers Activities Center: "Noah was running around in the gym. He started young; I think he was 4 when he started playing organized ball. He's been playing forever."

Ben Wolfe rocked the boat during his four-year coaching stint at LLHS. alleging in the 1996-97 season that Los Lunas Schools had violated federal Title IX regulations in regard to equal treatment for girls sports compared to boys sports.

He was fired in April 1997, despite an emotional outpouring of support, by the district's school board.

It ended Ben Wolfe's high school coaching career, but not his coaching career: Ben Wolfe, Noah's first coach, had Noah playing point guard for the AAU Tar Heels team for about five years. Rams Matt Churchman and Isaac Aragon have been Wolfe's AAU teammates as well; other local area players on the team include DeAndre Lansdowne and Mason Wehrli (Sandia) and Sam Lente (Rio Grande).

The family was living in the Northeast Heights, with Noah Wolfe seeing sparse playing time as a sophomore at Sandia High when Ben opted to move his family to Rio Rancho. Older son Micah, who played his senior season at Sandia, wasn't afforded a chance to play for the Rams.

The time couldn't have been any better - politics at Sandia and his niece's husband getting the head-coaching job in Rio Rancho.

"If it's not a level playing field, I don't want to be there," Wolfe said of his decision to move. Sandia's loss became the Rams' gain.

It didn't take long for Noah to fit in; he helped lead the Rams to their first District 1-5A title and was named the district's Player of the Year.

Suffice it to say, the Wolfes have become Rams for keeps.

Elijah's name may someday become as prominent in the sports pages as Noah's; sister Iahlayah, 10, plays soccer and the clarinet and attends Maggie Cordova Elementary, where her mom, Ramona, is the nurse's aide. Micah Wolfe is in the U.S. Navy, stationed in Iraq; the family's eldest son, Isaiah, is in the Air Force and was in Clovis last week to watch Noah and the Rams play.

So, there he was at The Rock last weekend, sitting a few feet from his old high school coach and almost taking turns yelling encouragement or questioning officials' calls with Rudy and Tina Aragon and Wally Steffensen, the father of Daniel Steffensen, like Isaac and Noah a Rams senior this season.

"It's hard as a parent," Ben Wolfe said. "It's hard to sit there and be quiet. There's just so much of the other stuff behind the game, including officiating, that as a parent you worry about."

One thing he won't have to worry about is his son Noah's future.

Colleges have been calling, each intent on securing the 6-5 standout for their basketball team's services next year.

Citadel may have the inside track, Ben Wolfe said, and although it has a military presence, there is no commitment to pursue a career in the military. Noah has a grade-point average of 4.1 or so and hopes to someday get into engineering, like his dad.

Ben Wolfe, a machinist, has been working at G.E. "off and on," he says, since 1981.

"He'd do good in that environment," he said.

Now, if Noah can only help engineer a run through the state tournament in a couple of months ...