Women’s Basketball Conference Season Preview

by Zach

It looks like for the third straight year that the Mountain West Conference will be a one bid league in Women’s Basketball, which means that every team will be more focused on the conference tournament championship compared the regular season championship, which doesn’t come with the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Last year, the Lobos finished second in the regular season and lost to Boise State in the championship game of the tournament last season. Since Colorado State won the regular season title, they were awarded the MW bid into the WNIT while the Lobos played in the Women’s Basketball Invitational. It will be interesting to see how the conference season shakes out and see if the Lobos can knock of Colorado State to win both conference titles.

Non-Conference Records:

  1. Colorado State 10-1
  2. Wyoming 7-3
  3. Boise State 7-4
  4. New Mexico 7-4
  5. UNLV 7-4
  6. SDSU 5-6
  7. Utah State 5-6
  8. Fresno State 4-7
  9. SJSU 2-9
  10. Nevada 1-10
  11. Air Force 0-11

Lobo Lane Team Rankings:

  1. Colorado State
  2. New Mexico
  3. Boise State
  4. Wyoming
  5. UNLV
  6. SDSU
  7. Utah State
  8. Fresno State
  9. SJSU
  10. Nevada
  11. Air Force

Four Tiers:

It appears that this year in the MW Conference there are four distinct tiers in women’s basketball. Clearly, that doesn’t mean that teams can’t move up or down a tier, but it generally means that a team will either stay in their tier, or move up or down one tier.

  • Tier One: Colorado State
  • Tier Two: New Mexico, Boise State, Wyoming and UNLV
  • Tier Three: SDSU, Fresno State and Utah State
  • Tier Four: SJSU, Nevada and Air Force

To me the biggest gap is between tier three and four, with the smallest gap being between tier two and three. I wouldn’t be surprised if tier one ends up having at least two teams and tier four ends up with only Nevada and Air Force.

Unbalanced Schedule:

Since the MW went to 11 teams a couple of years ago, each team plays two teams only once, which was necessary in an 18 game season. This year, the Lobos it may have caught a huge break, as they play every team in conference twice except Colorado State and Wyoming. Why is this important? Since the MW looks at the conference record first and then goes to tie breakers, it benefits playing the other top teams only once. An added benefit to the Lobos schedule, they get to play Colorado State at home. If the Lobos are able to win that home game against Colorado State, the Lobos would hold the first tie breaker if the two teams were to end up with the same conference record. This will also just help with the Lobos’ record in general, as I believe that going 15-3 in conference will win you the conference regular season title outright and the Lobos have a shot to do that with this schedule.

Home Sweet Home:

While the Lobos have lost two straight home games, the Lobos didn’t lose a home game last year in conference play. If the Lobos are able to go undefeated at home during conference play again this season, they will have a great shot to win the conference regular season and get a well-deserved one seed in the conference tournament. While I don’t want to get ahead of the 18 game conference schedule the Lobos are about to start, it is very important for the Lobos to win all their home games if they want to win the title. Plus, if they win all 9 home games, they would only need to go 6-3 on the road to put themselves in a great position to win the title.

Conference Scheduling:

I really wish that the MW would find a way to have it where the men and women’s schedules didn’t conflict so much. It would be nice if the women’s schedule played on different nights then the men. Since the Women’s teams don’t have TV to worry about, in my opinion it would be smart for the league to have women’s weekday games on Thursday, since it doesn’t conflict with the men’s Tuesday-Wednesday weekday scheduling. I have a feeling it would help the Lobo women’s attendance numbers if the Lobo fans didn’t have decide to either go to the women’s game or to watch the men’s game on TV. I hope that it changes at some point, but I don’t know if and when it would ever happen.

Picks:

Throughout the conference season I will be picking every conference game, which will allow us to keep an eye on the MW as a whole and should be a lot of fun. Hopefully I don’t embarrass myself too much!

So here are tonight picks:

New Mexico AT Nevada: New Mexico

SJSU AT USU: USU

SDSU AT Wyoming: Wyoming

UNLV AT Fresno State: UNLV

Here is to a fun and exciting conference season!