Mountain West Watch — Midseason power rankings, grades, awards ladder for men’s basketball | Sports



We’re crossing the midway point of Mountain West play, with each of the teams having played, or will have played, 10 of the eventual 20 games of the conference schedule by the end of the day. That means it’s time to check in on the conference as a whole and have some fun grading the teams for their performance so far.

These grades won’t be completely isolated to exclusively what the teams have done in conference play, but the recency bias of those MW games will have a significant impact. Several teams are getting sub-par grades for poor performances in conference games after a solid non-conference slate.

And, just to add a little more content to this, we’ll order the teams in my own power rankings of the conference.

Power Rankings and team grade

1. Utah State (A+)

The Aggies have become a bit of a media darling among the mid-major loving outlets for a second straight year. This year has a different flavor since it’s gone from “How did Danny Sprinkle return zero points from last year’s team and build a contender?” to “How do the Aggies keep doing this with new coaches every year?”

As much as this trend is becoming a norm to Aggie fans, it’s still a huge anomaly to what normally happens in basketball, hence the gawking media and growing number of interview requests in Jerrod Calhoun’s inbox. It’s also worth the highest grade for the Mountain West midseason. A first-year coach who took over the only program to lose multiple First Team All-Mountain West players from his roster still has the team effectively tied for first mid-way through conference play.

2. New Mexico (A)

Really the only reason for not giving the Lobos an A+ is that they were pretty much expected to be here. New Mexico was picked to finish second and received a first-place vote. That doesn’t discount what it’s taken to be at the top at the halfway point, but there’s nothing surprising about it so they’re not getting extra credit for it like USU is.

3. San Diego State (B-)

It feels both right and wrong to put San Diego State this high. Given the extremely narrow escapes against Air Force and San Jose State along with the loss at home to UNLV, it (almost) seems like the tide is turning against the Aztecs. They’re on the verge of falling out of the at-large conversation for the NCAA Tournament.

And yet, SDSU have only lost one of the three games mentioned and have a blowout win against Nevada in Lawlor to its recent credit. The problem with the Aztecs doesn’t seem to be potential or capability, but consistency and focus. That win over Houston is hard to overlook, but ugly performances all over conference play mean that victory is carrying so much weight for the Aztecs’ resume it could win an Olympic lifting title. 

San Diego State is still one of the biggest threats in the conference. They just need to actually play like that a little more often.

4. Colorado State (B+)

It’s been a bit of an up-and-down season for Colorado State, but given its preseason placement of seventh, the fact the Rams are in the conversation for being a conference contender is a very respectable thing. They were picked to finish seventh in the conference but are second now and have a legitimate Player of the Year candidate in Nique Clifford (who’s name will also come up for Defensive Player of the Year). Colorado State had a tough road replacing Isaiah Stevens and a host of other great players and have mostly done a good job of it.

5. Boise State (D)

There’s a palpable frustration emanating out of Boise with how this season has gone. The Broncos were the overwhelming favorite to win the conference, with 19 of the 26 first-place votes being cast for them. And right now they’re 5-4, tied for fifth and well outside the conversation for contention in the title race and the NCAA Tournament. Boise State will still be a 20-win team and respectable by most standards, but its fans were hungry for more and aren’t getting it.

6. UNLV (B-)

UNLV is being UNLV right now. They’re just making everybody’s life miserable, at times including themselves. In one week they were blown out in two games by a combined 44 points, then the next week they beat a ranked Utah State team and went on the road to beat SDSU in Viejas Arena, and then the next week lost at home to both Wyoming and New Mexico. The Rebels are living up to their name a little too well, refusing to pick a lane. The grade still comes out on the positive end, though. They have some nice wins. And they were picked to finish fifth and are currently tied for fifth so they’re living up to expectations.

7. Nevada (D-)

Picked to finish third and with the preseason Newcomer of the Year on the team, Nevada were supposed to be an ascendant team. They returned several up-and-comers from a second-place team last year that the Wolf Pack were pairing with some good newcomers. But none of that has resulted in success, or at least the level of success that was expected. Nevada’s NET rankings, among others like KenPom, remains fairly high, but the Wolf Pack are tied with Wyoming and San Jose State at the midpoint of the year. If you told a Nevada fan back in November that’s where they’d be, that fan would probably have a stroke due to the devastating surprise.

8. San Jose State (B)

There’s a growing number of “so close” games for San Jose State. Just yesterday they nearly got a season-defining win over San Diego State, but blew it in the final minutes. A close game against Utah State was also impressive, but the Spartans likewise choked down the stretch.

9. Wyoming (B+)

This is the only largely positive review of a team at the bottom of the table, but Sundance Wicks has the most impressive looking team among the bottom feeders. They’ll end up losing most of their games, but by golly are they going to make opponents earn those wins with blood and sweat. You have to respect what they’re doing and the difficulty the program is facing. Things could end up looking much better record-wise in a couple years for the Cowboys.

10. Fresno State (D+)

The Bulldogs were in a similar position to SJSU and Wyoming, looking for an upward push but needing some kind of spark to pull it off. New head coach Vance Walberg hasn’t yet found that spark. He reached into the JUCO ranks but has mostly come up empty in terms of impact players (one of the potential impact guys got kicked off the team). 

11. Air Force (C-)

There’s no way to be giving Air Force a positive grade, but there’s no reason to be too mean. The Falcons were expected to be bad and they are. Ethan Taylor looks pretty good and deserves props for sticking it out instead of transferring like a lot of other great Air Force players. If Wesley Celichowski sticks around, the 7-footer could throw a wrinkle into the Falcons’ usual lineup that is typically a micro-ball unit. But this year just isn’t going to be it.

Awards Ladder

At the midway point of the season, this is how I think each of the races for the various “of the year” awards with the top three contenders for each one.

Player of the Year

  1. Donovan Dent (New Mexico)
  2. Ian Martinez (USU)
  3. Nique Clifford (CSU)

The voting behavior for Player of the Year has very consistently been the “best player on the best team” gets the award. And while I don’t love that logic as it’s robbed multiple far more deserving winners of the award, this year it lines up pretty well that the top players are on the top teams.

Donovan Dent is the frontrunner. His individual numbers are stellar and his dominant play is pretty much the reason New Mexico is atop the Mountain West at this point. His biggest threat will end up being whichever player coaches feel is the best among Utah State’s guys. Ian Martinez would probably be the choice, though Mason Falslev still has four MW Player of the Week awards on his shelf from earlier this year.

It’s mostly a coincidence that Nique Clifford is on the third place team, I promise I’m not just using “best player on best team” logic here. Even if the Rams were fourth, fifth, or worse I’d still have him near the top because I think he’s that caliber of player.

Defensive Player of the Year

  1. Miles Byrd (SDSU)
  2. Nique Clifford (CSU)
  3. Magoon Gwath (SDSU)

San Diego State simply has the best defense so it’s not going to be any surprise they’ve got two players in the top three. But, to be honest, I think this is the closest race out of any of the awards right now. Each of these three has a very good case to be the winner. Byrd and Clifford are the two best perimeter impact defenders and Gwath is the best rim protector, which always goes a long way with these kinds of awards. Whoever gets it will be well deserving.

Newcomer of the Year

  1. Obi Agbim (Wyoming)
  2. Alvaro Cardenas (BSU)
  3. Kobe Sanders (Nevada)

I’m just gonna come right out and say that I simply do not know whether players like Alvaro Cardenas, or even Josh Uduje even though I didn’t have him top three here, are eligible to be NOY. Cardenas and Uduje are new to their teams but not the conference as Cardenas was at SJSU before going to Boise State and Uduje is now at SJSU after being with Utah State last year. The Mountain West handbook was not helpful in providing any clarifying information or criteria for the awards.

All that said, I think Agbim should be a runaway candidate here despite playing on one of the bottom-feeders of the conference. He’s second in the conference in scoring and is one of the best 3-point shooting players in the country. No other newcomer has taken on the mantle he has and done so much with it on an individual scale. Sanders was supposed to, but he’s been up-and-down in the star role with Nevada.

Freshman of the Year

  1. Magoon Gwath (SDSU)
  2. Taj DeGourville (SDSU)
  3. Jordy Barnes (USU)

Just about every team has their contributing freshman, but SDSU seems to have the best two. Gwath is going to get DPOY consideration and is a full-time starter for the Aztecs. DeGourville is actually one of the more underrated freshmen in my opinion. As for Barnes, he’s a bit of an advanced stats darling, though he’s not exactly miles ahead of any of the other freshman candidates. In the end, Gwath is a pretty clear choice. He’s not been a very consistent player, but there have been plenty of flashes (his last two games, for example) and has more of a game-to-game impact than any other freshman in the conference.

Sixth Man of the Year

  1. Karson Templin (USU)
  2. Javan Buchanan (BSU)
  3. Jailen Bedford (UNLV)

For an award that’s often just thrown to the guy that scored the most points as a sixth man, there’s much more nuance to Templin being at the top here. Sure, he’s fourth in scoring among prospective 6MOY candidates (which I’ve defined so far as any player that’s started fewer than 10 games and still qualify for the minutes per game leaderboard), but there’s a lot more that should be considered here. For one, he’s not really that far behind in scoring, putting in 9.0 PPG which is mostly in the realm of Javan Buchanan’s 10.6, which leads the candidates. But Templin leads or is tied with Buchanan for every other major statistical category and is neck-and-neck in efficiency.

Where Templin really steps forward is in the advanced stats as they love the USU forward way more than any other candidate in this pool. Heck, Evan Miyakawa’s catch-all metric (Bayesian Performance Rating) has Templin 12th among all MW players, not just sixth men. Box Plus/Minus, Win Shares Per 48 Minutes, PER, all favor Templin by a notable margin over any other potential sixth men. Buchanan is (kind of) close in some of those metrics, though, so he’s not a long shot by any means. Jailen Bedford being third is a bit of a dart throw. There’s 4-5 players you could make a good argument for that spot, guys like Latrell Davis, Dexter Akanno, Justin McBride, RJ Keene or Taj DeGourville. Pick your favorite to put in that third spot, but it’s gonna come down to Templin and Buchanan with Templin having the edge.

Coach of the Year

  1. Jerrod Calhoun (USU)
  2. Richard Pitino (New Mexico)
  3. Niko Medved (CSU)

I nearly didn’t even bother to put in a third candidate given just how not-close this race is. You have Jerrod Calhoun as the clear and obvious favorite for reasons we’ve already gone over. Then you have the chief rival, Pitino, who could potentially have being the coach of the regular season title-winning team as a feather in his cap. Boise State and San Diego State have underperformed a bit too much to have their coaches be considered. Niko Medved seemed the best third option given his team is third. But seriously, no one is challenging Calhoun for this award at this point. His name is probably already being chiseled into the base.



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