Around the Mountain: Checking in on Pac-12 vs. MW standings, player awards and games to watch

The Mountain West schedule hits the turn this week.

By Friday night, every Mountain West team will have completed 10 games in the league's 20-game schedule format.

As this is the swan song of the league in its current makeup, I thought it'd be a good time to check in on the records of the five teams defecting to start up the new Pac-12 vs. the seven holdovers who will remain in the Mountain West.

To date this season, there have been 29 games in this future Pac 12 vs. MW scenario. The future Pac-12 schools hold a 17-12 edge.

To even things out to a more basketball-appropriate five-on-five comparison (that conveniently leaves off the two worst teams in the conference, Air Force and San Jose State), then the edge is 12-10 for the Mountain West.

Air Force and San Jose State are rated 346th and 242nd in Monday morning's KenPom.com rankings, respectively. The next-lowest-rated MW team is Fresno State at 138. AFA and SJSU have a combined 0-7 record against future Pac-12 teams and are 1-17 in league play overall, with the only win coming when the Spartans beat the Falcons.

The top 10 is clearly in a different realm.

But, not counting them for the future MW lineup isn't reality. Thus, the accurate count is 17-12, Pac-12.

Sure seems like a pretty good basketball conference with that top 10 though, doesn't it?

Future Pac-12 vs. MW records

• San Diego State — 6-1
• Utah State — 3-2
• Colorado State — 3-2
• Boise State — 3-3
• Fresno State — 2-4
• TOTAL: 17-12 (.586)

Future MW vs. Pac-12 records

• Grand Canyon — 4-1
• Nevada — 3-2
• UNLV — 3-2
• New Mexico — 2-2
  
• Wyoming — 0-3
• San Jose State — 0-3
• Air Force — 0-4
• TOTAL: 12-17 (.414)

Mountain West player awards

Here are the Player and Freshman of the Week awards as selected by the league office on Monday:

MW PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Jaden Henley, Grand Canyon — The senior guard averaged 20.0 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists in wins over San Diego State and Fresno State.

Henley should have won the award if for no other reason than this dunk.

MW FRESHMAN OF THE WEEK: Jake Hall, New Mexico — The Lobo averaged 17.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game in home wins over Fresno State and Nevada. It's Hall's second FOW from the league this season.

The recent heater Hall has been on — averaging 19.0 points and hitting 51.2% of his 3s over the past six games — in addition to his hot shooting in Saturday's win over Nevada and the recent freshman record he broke at UNM was all part of the lede on my Emptying the Notebook column on Sunday morning: Emptying the Notebook: No freshman wall for Hall, 'Shot Fake Jake' is on a heater

Weekly Nique

In an effort to correct the league's weekly awards when needed, or at least recognize a few more players around the league each Monday, Colorado State fan and podcaster Steve Ivy and I hand out our own player awards each Monday called the Weekly Nique. Monday, we 100% agreed with both weekly awards, but handed out the prestigious Weekly Nique's anyway.

Weekly Nique POW: Drew Fielder, Boise State — The Broncos' 6-11 center averaged 17.5 points, 8.5 rebounds and blocked 1.5 shots in wins at Wyoming and vs. Air Force. In the latter, he had 20 points and eight rebounds in fewer than 20 minutes played.

Weekly Nique FOW: DeShawn Gory, Fresno State — The Fresno State wing had one of the statlines of the year in a loss to the Lobos in the Pit on Wednesday — 31 points, 14 rebounds, five assists — and followed that up with 19 and 10 against Grand Canyon. That's crazy impressive for a freshman, and had it not come in two losses, he would have had a good case against Hall.

Poll position

No Mountain West team was ranked in this week's Associated Press Top 25, but one voter felt Utah State's home loss to UNLV/road win at Colorado State week was worthy of putting them back on his ballot.

Percy Allen of the Seattle Times ranked the Aggies 24th on his ballot, giving them the two points they received this week, putting them 10 spots outside the Top 25.

My five

Here are the five games I'm most looking forward to watching this week around the Mountain, listed in order of when they're being played:

• Grand Canyon at Nevada: 8:30 p.m. MT Tuesday (FS1) — This one will be big for Indiana high school and college hoops junkies with Bryce Drew and Steve Alford going at it (and throw in Noodles for the standout high school days, too, before going to Georgia Tech for college). In this neck of the woods, this could be shaping up to be a pivotal matchup for Mountain West Tournament seeding in a year that only the top four teams get byes into the quarterfinals (these teams enter the week at fourth and fifth place in the standings).
• New Mexico at UNLV: 9 p.m. MT Tuesday (CBS Sports Network) — Two of this year's three new Mountain West coaches get their only regular season matchup as Josh Pastner's UNLV Runnin' Rebels don't get to visit the Pit this season to play Eric Olen's Lobos. Some of the best freshmen in the league play big roles in this games with UNM's Jake Hall, Tomislav Buljan and Uriah Tenette and UNLV's Tyrin Jones and Issac Williamson.
• Boise State at Grand Canyon: 7 p.m. MT Friday (FS1) — Don't tell Boise State it's out of the running for a bye into the MW Tournament quarterfinals with a top four finish. But wiggle room is pretty much gone now for the Broncos, whose sky-is-falling-stretch a few weeks ago started with Grand Canyon embarrassing them in Boise. GCU has since added Utah State and San Diego State to their list of big wins.
• UNLV at Nevada: 8 p.m. MT Friday (CBS Sports Network) — This in-state rivalry and the teams' records puts this game in over Saturday's Border War rivalry between Colorado State at Wyoming, but both are going to be good. Nevada has the clear edge over the Rebels, but a win on the road against the Pack would be a nice building block for a UNLV team that may not have much of a postseason in its near future.
• San Diego State at Utah State: 11 a.m. MT Saturday (CBS) — Two of the top three teams in the league will jockey for position atop the standings. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty big.

Reach Geoff Grammer at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.