{"id":28,"date":"2016-03-07T18:24:29","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T00:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/67.227.157.91\/~kenpom\/wp_blog\/2016-mountain-west-tournament-preview\/"},"modified":"2016-03-07T18:24:29","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T00:24:29","slug":"2016-mountain-west-tournament-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2016-mountain-west-tournament-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"2016 Mountain West tournament preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Mountain West Conference<br \/>\nMarch 9-12. All games at Las Vegas.<br \/>\nkPOY: Josh Adams, Wyoming.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Mountain West tournament opens on Wednesday with three games at the Thomas &amp; Mack Center.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t quite get my dream scenario where UNLV was actually the favorite in this event despite being sub-.500 in league play. The Rebels held up the second requirement. In losing by 36 in the season finale at San Diego State, UNLV finished 8-10 and received the seven-seed in the tournament. That allows the Rebels to play Air Force, rated as the weakest team in the league, in their first game and potentially avoid the Aztecs until the title game. <\/p>\n<p>But even if that were to play out &#8211; and with Derrick Jones no longer with the team, the Rebels almost have no bench, so that seems unlikely &#8211; there\u2019s the pesky issue of playing the team that just beat you by 36 a few days earlier. There\u2019s plenty of variance form game to game, but the Rebels also lost to San Diego State by 15 at home earlier in the season. So in the end, UNLV&#8217;s chances of winning are quite a bit worse than San Diego State\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>All of this avoids the elephant in the room that it hasn\u2019t been the best season for the Mountain West. It\u2019s a one-bid league in a season where there was some decent talent returning. Also sadly, this is the final year for the all-inclusive format. The conference is only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coloradoan.com\/story\/sports\/csu\/mens-basketball\/2015\/12\/18\/mountain-west-baskeball-tournament-trim-eight-teams\/77605086\/\">inviting eight teams to Vegas next season<\/a>.<\/p>\n<pre>                  Qtrs Semis Final Champ\n 1 San Diego St.   100  82.0  64.1  44.6\n 3 Boise St.       100  74.9  40.7  18.1\n 7 UNLV           85.5  52.7  30.4  14.1\n 2 Fresno St.      100  44.2  20.6   7.4\n 4 New Mexico      100  53.6  15.7   6.5\n 5 Nevada          100  46.4  12.3   4.7\n 6 Colorado St.   67.2  19.6   6.5   1.7\n 9 Utah St.       54.1  10.3   4.7   1.7\n 8 Wyoming        45.9   7.7   3.2   1.0\n11 San Jose St.   32.8   5.5   1.1   0.2\n10 Air Force      14.5   3.1   0.7   0.1\n\n<\/pre>\n<p><u><strong>Mountain West tourney records<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n<pre>UNLV          25-12\nSan Diego St. 23-12\nNew Mexico    16-12\nBoise St.      3- 4\nWyoming       11-15\nColorado St.  10-15\nUtah St.       1- 2\nFresno St.     1- 3\nAir Force      3-16\nSan Jose St.   0- 1\nNevada         0- 3\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mountain West Conference March 9-12. All games at Las Vegas. kPOY: Josh Adams, Wyoming. The Mountain West tournament opens on Wednesday with three games at the Thomas &amp; Mack Center. I didn\u2019t quite get my dream scenario where UNLV was actually the favorite in this event despite being sub-.500 in league play. The Rebels held [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}