2024-25 Conference Previews: Mountain West

Mountain Best for at least one more season

Hello! As laid out in the season preview for this newsletter, we’re changing up preview season a little. Previews will be released in alphabetical order, but somewhat differently than usual: one P5 a day, one two-bid(ish) conference a day, and one grab bag of one-bid leagues a day. One of each will be free for all to read. This one is a paid piece, and there’s a link to sign up below.

You can find all of these in the 2024-25 previews section of this website. On with the show.

MOUNTAIN WEST

Tier 1A

1. Boise State

2. New Mexico

3. Nevada

Tier 1B

4. San Diego State

5. Colorado State

6. Utah State

7. UNLV

Tier 2A

8. San Jose State

9. Wyoming

Tier 2B

10. Air Force

11. Fresno State

YES!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Never bet on the Mountain West. These teams all lost!” WHO CARESSSSSSS THEY ROCK. I COULD DO ALL CAPS THE WHOLE TIME, but I will not do that because that’s pretty annoying. A six-bid Mountain West, man. “They went 2-4 in the Round of 64” is the reaction from people you tell this to, and to that I say: they were supposed to, given their seeding. The MWC got screwed more than any other conference by the committee, seemingly an intentional reaction to having to give this conference six bids.

The Bracket Matrix, which is the most accurate reading on the bracket given its status as a consensus, had Utah State as a 6 seed, Nevada a 7, Boise an 8, and Colorado State a 9. Collectively, the MWC was underseeded by an average of 1.67 seed lines. No other multi-bid conference even cracked 1.0 on average in either direction. The three most underseeded teams, relative to the national consensus, were all members of the Mountain West.

So we get another year of fine-but-nothing-special March performances and another year of people calling you an idiot for caring about the MWC. Wrong! It’s just as much a November-March delight as it ever was, and as it ever will be until the Pac-12 fully destroys it for no reason at all. This should once again be the best of the Next Five conferences barring a collective overperformance by the A10. Congratulations to everyone trying to blow this up to shift 1% more money to other bank accounts.

Anyway, another year where this should be quite fun. You’ll note above that instead of the traditional Tier 1/2/3/4, we have a 1A/1B/2A/2B. This is because this conference is going to be hard to figure out. Tier 1, collectively, represents the seven teams that feel a real level ahead of everyone else and are Day One hopefuls to win the conference, however inaccurate that may be. Tier 2 would be shock contenders and are mostly hoping to not embarrass themselves. Anyone who tells you they 100% know the order of the standings here is a hopeful fool.

The only reason no one names Leon Rice of Boise State the obvious best coach in this conference is because Brian Dutcher exists. Otherwise, he’d be a yearly award winner. Using publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Education, Boise’s basketball budget routinely ranks somewhere between 5th-7th in the Mountain West, well behind that of a San Diego State and generally behind all of Colorado State/Nevada/New Mexico. Boise State’s last finish outside the MWC top four was in 2019-20, and they’ve posted a top-four MWC finish in eight of the last ten seasons. Leon Rice and crew are the Mountain Time definition of more with less.

I say all this because I kind of think they’re getting underrated once again. It seems like the average reader/basketball fan, based on KenPom’s HUMAN Poll, has Boise State in a functional six-way tie for second with San Diego State well ahead of the pack. I mean, maybe. I do think this conference could be pretty darn wonky! But this is Leon Rice, this is Boise State, and I couldn’t believe it when I saw them in a functional tie for fifth at one analytics site.

Now, if you’re purely ranking roster talent, Boise State might have the fifth or even sixth-best group in the league. Three starters are gone from a team that ended up a 10 seed last year, and precisely six players on the entire roster registered college minutes last year. There’s a real chance that the starting lineup consists of an NAIA up-transfer and either a true freshman or a 6’7” bench player at shooting guard. I get the concern. I also get that when you return Tyson Degenhart and O’Mar Stanley, with Degenhart being a pretty obvious frontrunner for MWC POTY and Stanley potentially being MWC First Team, you have a really good floor to start with.

Degenhart in particular, whew. Stanley is pretty sick in his own right and is ridiculously hard to stop in the post, but without Degenhart I genuinely don’t think he’d be as effective. This bears out in the stats:

• Degenhart/Stanley frontcourt: +21.9 Net Rating, 118.0 Offensive Rating, 96.1 Defensive Rating

• All other frontcourts: +17.8 Net Rating, 116.0 Offensive Rating, 98.2 Defensive Rating

But it also bears out when Stanley is out there without Degenhart.

• Stanley, no Degenhart: +13.1 Net Rating, 120.3 Offensive, 107.2 Defensive

• Stanley, yes Degenhart: +19.4 Net Rating, 117.2 Offensive, 97.8 Defensive

Degenhart covers up a lot of plausible flaws and has for a while. I think Rice and crew will miss him immensely once his eligibility concludes in March or perhaps April. This is a player who came in as a no-star freshman, immediately put up one of the best freshman seasons in Mountain West history, followed it up with a top-five sophomore season in MWC modern history, then followed that up with a top-10 MWC season of the last 15 years. By career Win Shares, which is heavily imperfect but is more or less a decent Total Value Achieved stat, Degenhart is on pace to be one of the three greatest Mountain West players of the last 30 years.

You have the best frontcourt in the league, the best player in the league, and also plucked Alvaro Cardenas from San Jose State, a very fun point guard that has an excellent jumper and is an unusually good finisher for 6’1". Defense will come around because his head coach is Leon Rice. But you gotta find two other starters, which is where the blind faith comes in. The most intriguing piece by far is NAIA Indiana Wesleyan transfer Javan Buchanan, who plays like a point guard at 6’7” but uses that size to be a special, special slasher. He hit 68% (!) of his attempts at the rim last year to go with 35% of his threes and was one of the five best NAIA players last season.

Beyond that, well, your guess is as good as mine. Former 3-star Chris Lockett Jr. might be the starting 2-guard after redshirting last year, which sounds insane, but the other options are Andrew Meadow (backup and decent shooter) or one of a variety of other unproven options. The backup frontcourt guy is Dylan Anderson, an Arizona transfer and former top-80 recruit with 54 career minutes. This is a thin roster, and it speaks to how highly we all should be thinking of Rice that Boise is first in this unscientific poll.

BEHIND THE WALL ($): The case for…New Mexico? Nevada? A frisky UNLV?