So far in our preview of the UNM Men’s Basketball season, we’ve focused entirely on the Lobos, including a look at the guards and wings, a look at the bigs and walk-ons, and some general thoughts about the season. So, today we’ll take a quick look at the Mountain West Conference as a whole. This year, as much as any in recent memory, the conference seems pretty much up for grabs, so we should be in for an exciting year.

The Official Lobo Lane Preseason Rankings

For these rankings and the following awards, I asked our site’s writers and contributors to fill out the same ballots that were given out for the official Mountain West Preseason Awards and then compiled the results to come up with our official rankings. So, without further ado, here they are:

Rank	Team
1	San Diego State
2	Boise
3	UNM
4	Utah State
5	UNLV
6	Fresno State
7	Colorado State
8	Wyoming
9	Nevada
10	Air Force
11	San Jose State

This ended up being pretty similar to the official poll, with only the teams in the 3-6 range shuffled around. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we’re more bullish about the Lobos than the MW voters were, but I do think that there are certainly arguments to be made for any of the teams in the 3-6 range to be in that third spot. San Diego State and Boise State were pretty neck and neck in our view, being the only teams to receive first place votes and certainly separating themselves from the pack. All of our ballots had the same four teams in the same four positions at the bottom of the bracket, which also matched up with the official poll. So, in our view, and what seems to be the general consensus, there are currently three tiers that we expect to see: SDSU and Boise at the top, those four teams at the bottom, and everyone else in the middle.

The Official Lobo Lane Preseason Awards

All-Conference Team:

• James Webb III, Jr., Boise State
• Cullen Neal, So., UNM
• Marvelle Harris, Sr., Fresno State
• Jalen Moore, Jr., Utah State
• Malik Pope, So., SDSU
• Also Receiving Votes: Josh Adams, Sr., Wyoming; Anthony Drmic, Sr., Boise State; Patrick McCaw, So., UNLV

There doesn’t seem to be much of a consensus for this team, as Harris is the only member of last season’s First Team All-Mountain West to return this year. Webb, Moore, and Harris are all coming off good seasons last year and seem primed to build off of them while Neal and Pope were likely chosen more off of their potential and expectations. There are several other players that wouldn’t be much of a surprise to be on this list at the end of the season, so it will be an interesting to see who rises to the top.

Player of the Year: James Webb III, Jr., Boise State

Apparently, we at Lobo Lane were impressed with what we saw out of Webb last season (must have been his 7-7 performance from three point range when he played in the Pit), as he was the clear choice for player of the year. The 6’9” forward showed a tremendous ability to score from all areas of the court and enough athleticism to be a strong defender. It seems like there’s a decent chance that this will be his last season in Boise, as NBA teams have apparently been sniffing around him, so enjoy watching him play this year. Unless he’s facing the Lobos, of course.

Newcomer of the Year: Tim Williams Jr., Jr., UNM

Tim was the unanimous choice for this award, which isn’t all that surprising given that a) this is a Lobo fan blog and b) he was the player of the year in the Southern Conference before he transferred to UNM. With Tim, the question is how well his game is going to translate going to a tougher conference, but if it does, he’s probably not just the newcomer of the year, he’ll end up on an all-conference team.

Freshman of the Year: Stephen Zimmerman, Fr., UNLV

Zimmerman was the highest-rated recruit to join the Mountain West this season, so it makes sense that our voters thought he was the best bet to win this award. The 7-footer is known for being a good rim-protector and also as a big who can step out a bit and hit the occasional jumper. He’s the latest in what seems like a long line of impressive recruits picked up by UNLV in recent years, so we’ll see if he can be the one that leads them back to the top of the conference. He did have some competition for this award from Jeremy Hemsley, who should have a good opportunity to make a case for himself by running the SDSU offense.

KenPom Conference Projections

It’s a brand new basketball season, which means that there’s a brand new set of team projections available at www.kenpom.com. Because of the nature of his rankings, they are certainly less accurate right now than they will be towards the end of the season, but I think they’re still fun to look at. So, in the first plot, I have the projected Pythagorean winning percentage (which can be thought of as a predicted win percentage against an average team) for all 351 D-1 teams, with the Mountain West teams shown in purple.

We see one team (SDSU) sticking out on the upper end, another team (Boise State) separating itself out a little, and five teams fairly closely clumped together after that. Those teams, Fresno State, Utah State, Colorado State, UNLV, and UNM, are consistent with what seems to be the second tier of the conference. In fact, kenpom.com projects all five of those teams winning either 10 or 11 games in conference play, which is just behind SDSU’s 13 and Boise’s 12. After that, there’s certainly a gap before we get to Wyoming, Nevada, and Air Force, followed by another big gap before we get to SJSU. Because of those top 7 teams, there should be a lot of opportunities for the Lobos and the other teams aspiring to make the tournament to get quality wins against top-100 opponents.

We can also look and see how the teams are projected to do on offense and defense by looking at kenpom.com’s projected adjusted offensive rating (AdjO) and adjusted defensive rating (AdjD). The way to interpret these is how many points you’d expect the team to score against an average opponent in 100 possessions and how many points you’d expect them to give up against an average opponent in 100 possessions. So, anything above 100 for AdjO and anything below 100 for AdjD is good. The projected values of these ratings for each MW team can be seen in the plot below. I also added a red line where the projected points scored and allowed are the same, so anything below that line would be a team that would have a Pythagorean winning percentage greater than .50.

As we can see, SDSU seems to be the cream of the crop, Boise looks to be next in line, and then the other five teams are all pretty similar. The Lobos have the second best projected defense in the conference, behind SDSU, but their offense is projected to hold them back. As we talked about before, there are certainly reasons to be optimistic about the offense, so a jump in that would really improve the Lobos’ chances of being at the top of the conference. Again, these ratings will be a lot more interesting once the season actually gets going, so it will be interesting to see what this plot will look like in a few months.