MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE TOURNAMENT PREVIEW
It’s tournament time. Before the actual NCAA tournament gets underway, we have Championship Week; a week filled with upsets, buzzer beaters, heroes, Cinderella stories, and much more. It gives the smaller schools a chance in the spotlight, the big boys have a large get together, and everybody in between gets one last chance to qualify for one of the nation’s best sporting events. For the Mountain West Conference, they have the caveat of their tournament taking place in one of the best cities in the world – Las Vegas. It shapes up as a fitting cap on a remarkable season of basketball by the 11 schools comprising the MWC.
The tournament takes place over four days – Wednesday through Saturday, with all games being held at the Thomas & Mack Center, home court for UNLV. The top 5 seeds all receive byes into the quarterfinals, with seeds 6-11 playing first round games on Wednesday. The winner will receive an automatic bid to the Big Dance starting next Thursday. Here is a preview of the week, with matchups, odds, players to watch for, and a prediction or two.
MARCH 8TH – FIRST ROUND
Game 1: 11:00 AM – #9 Fresno State Bulldogs (11-19, 6-12) vs. #8 Colorado State Rams (14-17, 6-12) Livestream on Mountain West Network
Game 2: 1:30 – #10 Air Force Falcons (14-17, 5-13) vs. #7 UNLV Runnin’ Rebels (18-12, 7-11) Livestream on Mountain West Network
Game 3: 4:00 – #11 Wyoming Cowboys (9-21, 4-14) vs. #6 New Mexico Lobos (21-10, 8-10) Livestream on Mountain West Network
MARCH 9TH – QUARTERFINALS
Game 4: 12:00 – Winner Game 1 vs. #1 San Diego State Aztecs (24-6, 15-3) CBS Sports Network
Game 5: 2:30 – #5 San Jose State Spartans (19-12, 10-8) vs. #4 Nevada Wolf Pack (22-9, 12-6) CBS Sports Network
Game 6: 6:00 – Winner Game 2 vs. #2 Boise State Broncos (23-8, 13-5) CBS Sports Network
Game 7: 8:30 – Winner Game 3 vs. #3 Utah State Aggies (24-7, 13-5) CBS Sports Network
MARCH 10TH – SEMIFINALS
Game 8: 6:30 – Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5 CBS Sports Network
Game 9: 9:00 – Winner Game 6 vs. Winner Game 7 CBS Sports Network
MARCH 11TH – CHAMPIONSHIP
Game 10: 3:00 – Winner Game 8 vs. Winner Game 9 CBS
** Note – all times are local PT
ODDS TO WIN
San Diego State 3-2
Boise State 7-2
Utah State 4-1
Nevada 6-1
New Mexico 12-1
UNLV 14-1
Colorado State 30-1
San Jose State 33-1
Fresno State 50-1
Air Force 200-1
Wyoming 250-1
STORYLINES
Where to start. The Mountain West has provided some of the most entertaining games of the entire college basketball season, with an outstanding batch of players, coaches, and venues. In late January/early February the league was looking like it had a path to 5 bids to the NCAA Tournament, with 4 a sure thing. Unfortunately, the depth of the conference led to a bit of cannibalizing, and now they are staring at the possibility of anywhere from a high of 4, to an unthinkable low of 2 depending on how things shake out in Vegas and across the rest of the country.
New Mexico has fallen completely off the bubble, while Nevada had a disastrous final week to put themselves right on the cut line. Boise State would be advised to not be one and done here as well, following their loss to Utah State in the finale. The Aggies are the only MWC squad trending upward recently, but even they likely need to win their first game here to feel safe. Regular season champ San Diego State is of course fine, and is only playing for seeding, along with trying to reclaim the conference tournament title that eluded them a season ago.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
How long do you have? Seriously, this section could go on for pages, the conference has it all. Let’s begin with a couple of seniors playing their last game or two, barring a miracle. Colorado State’s Isaiah Stevens and Wyoming’s Hunter Maldonado have been a joy to watch for years. Both played in the Big Dance a year ago, and have endured tough seasons in 2022-23, largely due to injury misfortune (more in Wyoming’s case). But they both went out with a bang on their respective Senior Nights and still play with the energy and heart that they played with when they were on winning teams. That tells you all you need to know about those two as winners.
In the preseason you could have gotten pretty long odds on either Omari Moore or Steven Ashworth being named player of the year in the conference. The coaches awards will be released shortly, while Moore won the media award yesterday. They do it in different ways, but they have both been dominant offensive players this season helping their squads overachieve. Ashworth shoots it from deep at a remarkable clip, while Moore is nearly unguardable when he is going downhill attacking the basket.
Nevada and New Mexico each have their own three headed monster of star power; Jarod Lucas, Kenan Blackshear, Will Baker for the Wolf Pack, and Jaelen House, Jamal Mashburn Jr., Morris Udeze for the Lobos. Boise State is like an ensemble cast on Broadway, great players everywhere – Max Rice, Tyson Degenhart, and Big Shot Marcus Shaver. We’ve gotten this far without mentioning anyone from the regular season champion Aztecs, which tells you both how good the league is, and how balanced SDSU is. They possess talented scorer Matt Bradley, who seems to be heating up at the right time. Also worth mentioning is EJ Harkless, of the host Rebels, who can go for 30 any given night, and will be shooting on familiar rims.
FAVORITES, DARKHORSES, AND MORE
San Diego State is the favorite and rightly so, but if you’ve been paying attention to the conference tournament action the past week, being the favorite means nothing. Multiple number 1 seeds lost their first game and only two have won their tournament to this point. There are also going to be more desperate teams in Vegas than SDSU, it just is what it is.
The two trendy darkhorses are New Mexico and UNLV. The Lobos because of their star power and their ability to beat anyone. UNLV because they are playing on their home floor. The problem for UNM is that they are not very deep at all, and winning this is going to take 4 wins in 4 days. That’s why missing out on the bye was huge. Wyoming is not a great matchup for them, and though they should survive it’s going to take something out of them. For UNLV it’s more of a consistency thing. They looked like a low-major team on Wednesday, getting embarrassed on Senior Night by Utah State, then turned around 3 days later and won in Reno against a good Nevada team. That is not normally the type of team you want to bank on winning 4 consecutive days.
San Jose State is an interesting team in the top half. They are playing with a massive amount of confidence, are extremely well-coached, and have a stud in Moore. Unfortunately for the Spartans, they have their two worst matchups in front of them – Nevada first, and then likely SDSU in the quarterfinals.
Utah State will also draw a lot of attention for their play of late, and their ability to shoot the lights out, especially considering they just torched the nets in the Thomas & Mack Center for 91 last Wednesday. When postseason play rolls around though, those baskets seem to shrink a bit and it’s not as easy to score the ball as you did all season long.
Then there is the defending tournament champs, Boise State. Leon Rice just reloads, coaches his guys up, and finds ways to win. This is another team that is not super deep, but they will only need 3 wins to cut the nets down for a second consecutive year.
PREDICTION
What will happen? We’ll get back to you Sunday on that one. Not good enough? Ok, while it is no fun to pick the favorite, that’s exactly what we’re going to do here. They may have their hands full for awhile Thursday afternoon in the quarterfinals against either Colorado State or Fresno State, but they should have enough to get to Friday. While Nevada should scrape past SJSU, the Wolf Pack are not trending well right now, and may be a bit fragile after blowing the late lead Saturday. The Aztecs will remember one of their 3 regular seasons losses, in Reno, and suffocate Nevada defensively en route to the final.
The bottom half would play out 10 different ways if it was played 10 times. Unfortunately we are only going to get to see it play out once. New Mexico has a couple of tough matchups in their path, but if they can get by Maldonado and Wyoming on Wednesday, the hunch here is that they ride the wave of fan support from Albuquerque to knock off Utah State in the quarters. Boise State will get all it can handle from UNLV Thursday night, but should do enough to eke by the up-and-down Rebels. That win will also likely be enough to cement the Broncos into the Big Dance. Maybe a bit of complacency sets in, and let’s be honest, it’s difficult to repeat in these tournaments. We’ll say the Lobos have one more first-class outing in them, taking down Boise State in overtime, just as they did in January.
That gets us a rubber match between San Diego State and New Mexico. They just played an instant classic two weeks ago, but adrenaline can only take you so far. By the second half the Lobos will be running on fumes and the call here is that Coach Dutcher and his veteran group will cut the nets down in Vegas. Enjoy the hoops from Vegas!