Ecuador = The New Mexico Lobos (Basketball)

R.I.P. Christian "Chucho" Benitez, who tragically died last year at age 27.
He was one of Ecuador's top players.

The Lobos are tough to beat at The Pit, but not in NCAA Tournament games.

Ecuador has one of the toughest home field advantages in world football. Their home ground, Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa in Quito, is more than 9,000 feet above sea level! As you can imagine, visiting teams struggle mightily with that altitude; and Ecuador isn't the same team when they play anywhere else. In CONMEBOL qualifying for this World Cup, Ecuador finished with 25 points, good enough for 4th place and the last automatic entry into the field of 32. Of those 25 points, they earned 22 of them in Quito, a whopping 88%! In contrast, Argentina won 20 of their 32 points at home (62.5%), Colombia won 17 of 30 (56.7%) and Chile won 18 of 28 (64.3%).

The University of New Mexico Lobos' basketball team also has a distinctive and notoriously tough home venue located at a high elevation. "The Pit" in Albuquerque is just over a mile above sea level. The Lobos have notched some memorable home wins through the years, but they've never done much in the NCAA Tournament. The farthest they've ever gotten is the 2nd round (that's the round of 32, FYI... I don't buy the fiction that the play-in games are now the "first round."). 

Ecuador can relate to such problems. They've never advanced past the "2nd round" (round of 16) in their two prior trips to the World Cup, nor have they gotten past the "2nd round" of the Copa America (the Quarterfinals), except for the two times when they served as the host country (they finished 4th both times). Being in Group E at least gives La Tri a puncher's chance at advancing from the group and thus matching their best ever World Cup performance from 2006. They were in fairly decent shape until the final minute of their first group match against Switzerland, when Swiss forward Haris Seferovic turned a 1-1 draw-- which would have put Ecuador in a decent position going into their next 2 matches-- into a 2-1 Swiss win, which leaves Ecuador behind the proverbial 8 ball. The Ecuadorians' only paths out of the group now involve either them upsetting France or Switzerland choking against Honduras. If they don't get 3 points against the Catrachos today, they're good as dead regardless.

P.S. Pairing Ecuador with the "Lobos" does not mean I'm rooting for them. I have no strong feelings about Ecuador one way or the other.