After an up and down (mostly down) non-conference season for the Mountain West teams, it’s finally time for the teams to start playing each other. Conference play starts on Wednesday and this year seems even more up in the air now than it did before the season started. So with that, we thought that it would be worthwhile to check back in with the conference and reset our expectations for how the season will play out.
The Official Lobo Lane Preconference Rankings
As we did in the preseason, I sent ballots to each of the members of the Lobo Lane family and had them rank all 11 MWC teams. As you might expect, things have shifted quite a bit, as we have seen teams lose players to transfers and injury, some teams overachieving, and some teams underachieving. One thing we seem to agree on, though, is that there are a bunch of teams who have a decent shot at winning the conference.
| Rank | Team | Record | Previous Rank |
| 1 | Boise State | 8-4 | 2 |
| 2 | UNLV | 9-4 | 5 |
| 3 | San Diego State | 7-6 | 1 |
| t-4 | Fresno State | 9-4 | 6 |
| t-4 | UNM | 7-6 | 3 |
| 6 | Utah State | 8-3 | 4 |
| 7 | Wyoming | 7-6 | 8 |
| 8 | Colorado State | 7-5 | 7 |
| 9 | Nevada | 8-4 | 9 |
| 10 | Air Force | 8-4 | 10 |
| 11 | San Jose State | 5-7 | 11 |
Boise State, basically by virtue of not falling flat on their face, moved up to the number one spot. UNLV looks like they might finally live up to their potential this year, which has given us a little more confidence to give them the biggest jump up the rankings from 5th to 2nd. SDSU hasn’t been impressive this year, but that’s mostly because they’ve been awful on offense. However, their defense has been so strong, it’s hard to see them not competing for a conference title. Fresno State has done nothing either impressive or embarrassing, which means that in this year’s MWC, they’re a top-4 team. Utah State lost David Collette to Utah in a dubious manner, but have managed to replace his production so far. It will be interesting to see how that holds up in the conference.
UNM, on the other hand, would have probably been at the top of these rankings had they been taken before the Rice game. But, now that they’re stumbling into the conference season, we’re not sure what to make of them. Like any of the previously mentioned teams, they seem to have a real shot at winning the conference regular season, but last week was so disastrous, it’s hard to feel comfortable about them.
Colorado State and Wyoming swapped places, likely due to the whisperings that CSU is falling apart behind the scenes, but none of our voters had either team ranked higher than 7th. So, unlike the six teams above them, if either of them became the regular season champions, it would be a bit of a surprise. Nevada, Air Force, and San Jose State remained the only constants in the conference, slotting in at the 9th-11th spots once again. Nevada and Air Force should still be frisky opponents who will pick up a few wins here and there while San Jose State will be an embarrassing loss to pretty much anyone else in the conference.
KenPom Conference Rankings
As the season goes on, we’re continuing to look at the KenPom rankings (www.kenpom.com), particularly to see not only how the MWC teams relate to each other, but how they relate to the rest of college basketball. We can get a good sense of this by looking at his estimated Pythagorean winning percentage, which can be thought of as a predicted win percentage against an average team. Clearly, a higher value indicates that the team is better. In the plot below, we see those ratings for all 351 D-1 teams, with the Mountain West teams shown in purple.
As we can see, things have not gone well for the Mountain West conference. There are three top-100 teams in the conference (UNLV, Boise St., and SDSU, respectively), but all of them are in the 70-80 range. That means that, unlike most years, there really aren’t any strong, resume-building wins to be had in conference play at this point. However, there are plenty of landmines to go around. It seems, in general, that any loss to a team with a ranking above 150, especially at home, is looked at as a bad loss and the Mountain West has 6 teams that meet that qualification. When people keep referring to the MWC as a potential one-bid conference, that’s where it’s coming from. A lot of this has to do with how bad the conference has done as a whole in this season to date. The best wins so far this season are probably UNLV vs. Indiana (neutral), UNLV vs. Oregon (at UNLV), Boise vs. Oregon (at Boise), and SDSU vs. Cal (neutral). Beyond that, you’re looking at wins against teams like Northern Iowa and Oakland as the next best wins. That’s not enough to convince anyone that this is a really strong conference at this point.
If there’s any consolation to this, these ratings are still relatively early and are subject to quick changes. After all, the Lobos were ranked 44th as recently as 10 days ago. If any of these teams are going to end up with an at-large bid, they’re going to have to really separate themselves from the rest of the conference, not only by winning game but by looking impressive doing so, which will help their KenPom rating significantly. I think that there are a few teams that have the potential to do just that (yes, including the Lobos), but it might be just as likely that all of these teams just beat up on each other and only the tournament champion will get an invite.
I also think that it’s worth looking at the way the teams in the conference are performing on both offense and defense. To do that, I’ll look at KenPom’s estimated 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. The average offense this season is at 102.3, so anything above that for AdjO and anything below it for AdjD is good. The current estimated 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 might expect, Boise is really good at offense, but what’s maybe a little surprising is how good they’ve done on defense. That combination is why I think they’re going to be dangerous in conference play. UNLV is kind of the reverse, with an average offense but a very good defense. Matchups between those two teams are going to be fun to watch. SDSU has been great defensively (9th in the nation by these metrics), but have been bad on offense. Their games are not going to be fun to watch. The Lobos, Fresno State, and Utah State round out the teams that have above average offenses and defenses, which means all of them should be thought of as players in the conference.
You’ll notice that there aren’t any teams very far towards the bottom-right corner, where teams with great offenses and defenses would appear. What that basically means is that there aren’t any world-beaters in the conference this year and all of the teams that we expect to contend are flawed in their own way. This might be a year where no one really separates themselves, the teams beat up on each other, and only one team ends up in the NCAA Tournament, which would be a shame for the conference in a lot of ways. But, as fans of college basketball and the MWC in general, this should be a fun season to watch.