Around the Mountain: An unfamiliar show of respect for the Mountain West in Monday's AP poll?

What was that unfamiliar purple glow on Monday’s new Week 10 Associated Press Top 25 poll?

If I didn’t know any better — and mind you, I don’t — I would almost say that was a hint of respect for the Mountain West conference shown by the 63 voters sprinkled across the country.

No, the New Mexico Lobos didn’t get any love (even from the local beat writer who is one of the 63 AP voters), but four other Mountain West programs received a significant amount of votes in Mondays poll and three — THREE! — teams were ranked in the same AP poll for the first time since 2012 that many teams in the league carried a ranking next to their name on the same ballot.

• No. 17 Colorado State (13-2 overall): Up from No. 13 last week with a high vote of No. 9.
• 19 San Diego State (13-2 overall): Not ranked last week, high vote of No. 10.
• No. 20 Utah State (14-1 overall): Not ranked last week, high vote 16.
• Receiving votes Nevada: 77 points, five spots out of the rankings, high vote 16

The respect for the league wasn’t just from the fact that three teams were ranked but the manner it happened.

First off, 14 of the 63 AP voters had all four of the above mentioned teams on their ballot. I repeat, FOURTEEN voters felt four Mountain West teams are Top 25 worthy. I don’t have the full ballot history of the poll, but I would not be surprised if this was the first, or one of the only times in the quarter-century history of the league that 14 voters showed that much love to the league at the same time.

The other signs of respect: Colorado State lost to unranked Utah State and only dropped to No. 17. Past Mountain West teams often had much more significant drops for one loss.

And Utah State went from not receiving any votes all the way into the No. 20 spot, leapfrogging more than a dozen teams that received votes or were ranked a week ago.

The AP rankings are just for talking points and recognition and don’t have anything to do with NCAA Tournaments or the big picture of the sport.

But, boy. Monday sure made the Mountain West, at least the top of it, look like one of the more relevant leagues in the country to me.

LIFE ON THE ROAD: The Mountain West has traditionally been one of the toughest leagues to rack up road wins. The travel is rough and the venues are unique with, what many fans across the country seem to sleep on, plenty of high-quality home crowd environments through the years.

In fact, in the first 24 seasons of the Mountain West (this is the 25th season), the league had a top 10 home win percentage during conference play out of 32 conferences, eight of those being top 5 national rankings.

In 2004, the MW home team won 43 of 56 games in that eight-team conference, leading the country. There was a larger gap in home court win percentage that season between No. 1 Mountain West (76.8%) and No. 2 Colonial Athletic Association (68.9%) than there was between the CAA and 19th place Pac-12 (61.1%).

You get the point. The league can be a tough place to go win on the road.

Through nine games over the first week of the league season, home teams went 6-3. The three road wins:

• Utah State 88-60 at Air Force
• Boise State 78-69 at San Jose State
• Nevada 72-59 at Fresno State

PLAYERS OF THE WEEK: As one might expect after the week they had, the Utah State Aggies swept Monday’s conference player awards.

Junior Great Osobor, a 6-foot-8 forward who followed head coach Danny Sprinkle over from Montana State where he started just 2 of 33 games, averaged 26.0 points, 11.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists while shooting 65.4% in wins at Air Force and vs. then-No. 13 Colorado State.

His Aggies teammate Mason Falslev, a 6-3 guard from Benson, Utah, averaged 18.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists in the two wins.

Falslev is just the third non-Lobo tin win the top freshman of the week honor in nine weeks this season as Lobo forward JT Toppin has won the award four times and Lobo guard Tru Washington has won it once. UNLV guard Dedan Thomas Jr. and Wyoming forward Cam Manyawu have also won the honor (there was no Freshman of the Week selected last week).

SELL OUTS: I posed the following question on social media last week: Will there be 18 or more sold out games during Mountain West play this season or 17 or fewer?

The rationale is defending national runner-up San Diego State has a decent chance of getting all nine home games sold out at Viejas Arena and teams like Utah State, UNM, Colorado State, Nevada and Boise State all have either really good teams or have had sell outs in recent seasons.

As of Monday evening, there were fewer than 1,000 tickets left for Saturday’s SDSU at UNM game in the Pit, so that will likely be the Lobos’ first sell out of conference play (it did sell out the Dec. 2 New Mexico State game).

So, here’s the running count: 3 sell outs in the opening week:

• San Diego State 2 (both games last week vs. Fresno State and UNLV)
• Utah State 1 (Saturday’s game vs. No. 13 Colorado State)

A NUMBER TO KNOW — 13: The Mountain West on Monday was the only conference in the country with five teams boasting 13 or more wins.