Full Court Press is a new feature on Mountain West Connection in which we recap the previous slate of Mountain West Basketball (slate being the sets of games. i.e. the Tuesday/Wednesday games and the Saturday games. In between those sets of games a post should be up) an preview next weeks games. This will be done every Monday and Friday during basketball season.
This week represents all that is bad in MWC basketball. 4 lopsided matchups with the 5th interesting MWC team off. Fortunately, this is the only set of games in which that is the case. Every other game night has at least one good matchup.
Speaking of matchups, Saturday's marquee game of UNLV-BYU didn't turn out to be a great game. BYU won in dominating fashion, 78-64. Although BYU played well and a lot of Cougars not named Jimmer Fredette stepped up, UNLV essentially beat themselves. When you shoot 30% from the field and commit 13 turnovers against a BYU team that thrives off misses and turnovers, you simply have zero chance at coming out with a win.
If you want to look at the bright side, we played that horribly, but kept within about 10 points during the whole game. If UNLV is able to just make some shots, then maybe if this matchup happens again in the MWC tournament, then there might be a different outcome.
The strange thing is all of the other games that were expected to be bad games didn't turn out to be like that. Air Force squeaked by Utah on the road 54-49. Colorado State held on to sweep the Border War against Wyoming, 59-56. San Diego State beat TCU, but only won 60-53. Is it just me or have the Aztecs struggled offensively since beating Wyoming?
Three things about MWC basketball
The Rebel Blog has a nice review of the BYU-UNLV game as well as his trip to Provo if you would like to know what people are like in Provo.
Rivals (Yes, Rivals) looks at just how phenomenal a job Steve Fisher has done in taking San Diego State from a horrible program to what it is today: A Powerhouse.
BYUCougars.com shows an interesting take on Jimmer Fredette becoming one of the 10 finalists for the Bob Cousy award.
MWC Standings
By RPI:
Team | RPI |
BYU | 1 |
San Diego State | 4 |
UNLV | 28 |
Colorado State | 47 |
New Mexico | 61 |
Air Force | 88 |
Utah | 144 |
TCU | 157 |
Wyoming | 269 |
The MWC has 2/3 of its conference in the Top 100 RPI... Take what you will from it.
By Record:
Team | Conference Record | Overall Record |
San Diego State | 8-1 | 22-1 |
BYU | 8-1 | 23-2 |
Colorado State | 6-3 | 16-7 |
UNLV | 5-4 | 17-6 |
New Mexico | 4-4 | 16-7 |
Air Force | 4-5 | 13-9 |
Utah | 3-6 | 10-13 |
TCU | 1-8 | 10-14 |
Wyoming | 1-8 | 8-15 |
Matchups for Tuesday/Wednesday:
Utah @ San Diego State
7:30 P.M. PT
Tuesday
The Mtn.
Wyoming @ New Mexico
6:00 P.M. MT
Wednesday
The Mtn.
UNLV @ TCU
7:00 P.M. CT
Wednesday
The Mtn. (Tape Delay @ 11:30 CT)
BYU @ Air Force
8:00 P.M. MT
Wednesday
The Mtn.
First thoughts on this week's matchups? Why in the world is UNLV-TCU on tape-delay? They could simply kick it to CBS College instead of wasting it onto Tape Delay...
Game of the Week:
It's a tie between BYU-Air Force and San Diego State-Utah. Utah gave San Diego State a lot of trouble in Salt Lake City and it might be interesting to see if Utah can replicate that in San Diego. Air Force is actually much improved from the past two years and currently have an RPI of 80. The only real way to tell which game will be important is when we see whether or not Utah shows up.
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