The calendar has turned to March, and I couldn’t be happier. The highlights of early conference tournaments already have me itching for Madness. The Mountain West and a majority of other leagues finished up this weekend; the Mountain West treated us with a regular season championship game on the season’s final day.
Behind 29 points and 17 rebounds from Cameron Oliver, Nevada celebrated their first-ever outright Mountain West regular season title in front of a sellout crowd in Reno. As Oliver says above, though, this thing isn’t over yet. While lifting a regular season trophy is nice for the fans and players, only the team left standing Saturday in Las Vegas will be headed to the Big Dance.
The 11-team field is set, and it figures to be unpredictable. Nevada and Colorado State were swept by their potential opponents in the semifinals, Fresno State and Boise State, respectively, in the regular season. Despite being the top two seeds, neither has a clear path to the championship game. New Mexico got F Tim Williams back from injury Saturday, and the Lobos will be pleased to have him back, even if he’s not 100%.
Another thing that jumps out to me is how much this league has been turned on it’s head in the last decade. Since the original Mountain West broke up in wake of conference realignment, the conference lost BYU and Utah, and added Nevada, San Jose State, Utah State and Fresno State. With this new group settled into the league, there’s been a shuffling of the hierarchy in both basketball and football.
Anyone who has followed the league in the past decade would only need to see a 6 vs. 11 game in the conference tournament between these two to realize things have changed. It remains to be seen if the narrative surrounding the league will actually start to change — while pre-season rankings are always inaccurate, it’s no accident that only one team (Fresno State at #4) finished where they were predicted to finish before the season.
The media voted on season awards after the conclusion of the games Saturday. In general, I found the selections mostly agreeable, although Marshall would have probably been my choice for POY. Without knocking him for playing on a mediocre team, I don’t think Brandon Clarke belongs on the first team over Chandler Hutchison. Both had a great season, and expect to see both of them make first team next season.
To finish off, here are some of the moments I’ll remember most from this season in Mountain West basketball.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR2i0JUIkXQ
I said after it happened that it we wouldn’t see a greater comeback in college basketball for the rest of the season. I was correct (sorry, Kansas).
Nick Duncan didn’t have a stellar senior season, but I’ll respect him forever for flying the bird so openly towards the Utah State student section.
Sure, the Mountain West is now a one-bid league. But no other conference had more parking lot arguments between a player and an opposing coach.