Around the Mountain: Dent, Toppin get preseason All-America mentions; Geoff Grammer's preseason MW ballot

Fear not, Lobo basketball fans.

There is a women’s exhibition game in the Pit on Wednesday night and a men’s exhibition game — the first game competition of the Eric Olen era — on Saturday against Washington State in Pullman, Washington.

The Journal, naturally, will be on hand covering both.

But until then, that darn local newspaper has one more painful, yet newsworthy, scab to pick.

The Associated Press on Monday announced its 2025-26 season men’s college basketball Preseason All-America team of the five top vote-getters from this year’s panel of 57 voters, including me. It also included vote totals for each of the 26 players who showed up on any ballot.

Now, for that pesky and painful part. Two of the country’s top preseason All-America vote-getters are former Lobos — Texas Tech’s JT Toppin and UCLA’s Donovan Dent.

There were four former Mountain West players who received votes: Toppin, the 2024 MW Freshman of the Year; Dent, 2025 MW Player of the Year; NC State’s Darrion Williams, 2023 MW Freshman of the Year while at Nevada; and Gonzaga’s Graham Ike, 2022 MW Preseason Player of the Year while at Wyoming.

2025-26 AP Preseason All-America teamPG Braden Smith, Purdue (57 votes)

F JT Toppin, Texas Tech (52)

F Yaxel Lendeborg, Michigan (30)

G/F AJ Dybantsa, BYU (22)

C Alex Condon, Florida (16)

Former MW players who received votes:PG Donovan Dent, UCLA (13)

F Darrion Williams, NC State (6)

F/C Graham Ike, Gonzaga (3)

One more poke

The trip down memory lane with Toppin and Dent — both genuinely pleasurable to interact with from my spot as a beat writer — got me thinking of a Nov. 27, 2023, article I wrote with the web headline: “Chemistry between Donovan Dent and JT Toppin has been bright spot for Lobos.”

That article, of the then-sophomore Dent and then-freshman Toppin, published shortly after the their eye-opening performance as UNM’s interim 1-2 punch in the 2023 Ball Dawgs Classic in Henderson, Nevada, while the team’s more established 1-2 punch of that season, Jaelen House and Jamal Mashburn Jr., sat out injured for that Thanksgiving Week tournament.

In three games in Henderson, Dent averaged 19.7 points and 8.3 assists and had an epic 18-point, 11-assist, 0-turnover game in a blowout win over Rice.

Toppin averaged 17 points, 8.3 rebounds and two blocked shots and had an epic 27-point, 11-rebound game in which he was 11-for-11 on 2-pointers and 5-for-5 on free throws (a missed heat-check 3-pointer ruined his perfect shooting game) in a win over Toledo, just his fourth collegiate game.

“When you watch the NBA, like 90% of it is high ball screens and nobody really knows how to stop it. And those two guys (Dent and Toppin) are really, really good at it,” Richard Pitino, the Lobos coach at the time, told the Journal.

“JT catches everything. He’s got terrific hands. We saw it in practice with a lot of what he does. Donovan comes off of these ball screens and he’s looking to pass. He gets two (defenders) on the ball. When he gets two on the ball, good things are gonna happen. JT is a perfect kind of pick and roll guy and Donovan’s as good of a guy in the country in passing off it.”

That was November 2023 quote about two Lobo players who somehow got recruited to Albuquerque out of California and Texas.

It’s now October 2025 and they’re two former Lobos now playing for schools in California and Texas that didn’t offer then scholarships out of high school.

Welcome to college basketball 2025.

And, genuinely, congratulations to both players.

My Preseason All-MW ballot

Here is my preseason All-Mountain West predicted order of finish and preseason player awards (full media poll results released Thursday from the league’s media day event in Las Vegas, Nevada). Look for more more analysis on every team and pick in the next week or so as the season draws near.

Order of finish:

1. San Diego State

2. Boise State

3. Utah State

4. New Mexico

5. Grand Canyon

6. Colorado State

7. Nevada

8. UNLV

9. Wyoming

10. San Jose State

11. Fresno State

12. Air Force

Preseason All-Conference

(10 players Listed alphabetically)

Deyton Albury, New Mexico

Javan Buchanan, Boise State

Miles Byrd, San Diego State

Reese Dixon-Waters, San Diego State

Mason Falslev, Utah State

Magoon Gwath, San Diego State

Jaden Henley, Grand Canyon

Andrew Meadow, Boise State

Brian Moore Jr., Grand Canyon

Elijah Price, Nevada

Preseason player awards:

Player of the Year: Miles Byrd, SDSU

Freshman of the Year: Naas Cunningham, UNLV

Newcomer of the Year: Brian Moore Jr., Grand Canyon

FOY NOTE: Cunningham is a redshirt freshman who transferred from Alabama but did not play in a game last season so is still eligible for MW Freshman of the Year.

NOY NOTE: Newcomer of the Year is open to any player new to the conference who is not a freshman. That disqualifies transfers such as UNM’s Albury and GCU’s Henley, who played last season at Utah State and UNLV, respectively.

Can you hear me now?

UNM’s exhibition game at Washington State on Saturday will not be streamed visually, but a radio broadcast set up by Washington State will be available (links on each team’s web sites).

The Journal will also be on site. Look for a story online, in Sunday’s print edition and with a live pregame show from the arena that will double as the Journal’s usual football postgame live show, which has streamed online after each Lobo football game this season.

The UNM football game starts at 1 p.m. with the postgame show starting about 45 minutes to an hour after the game ends. Lobo basketball pregame shows usually start about one hour before tipoff (the UNM-Washington State exhibition starts at 6 p.m. Pacific/7 p.m. Mountain

Media Day roll call

Thursday’s Mountain West basketball media day event in Las Vegas, Nevada, features men’s teams meeting with media in the morning, women’s teams in the afternoon.

Included in those will be live interviews on TheMW.com for all teams.

Media day participants for the UNM women’s team — head coach Mike Bradbury and players Alyssa Hargrove and Destinee Hooks — are traveling to Las Vegas on Thursday morning after playing an exhibition Wednesday night in the Pit.

Here is the full list of men’s basketball participants:

• AIR FORCE: Joe Scott, Wesley Celichowski, Caleb Walker

• BOISE STATE: Leon Rice, Dylan Andrews, Javan Buchanan

• COLORADO STATE: Ali Farokhmanesh, Kyle Jorgensen, Rashaan Mbemba

• FRESNO STATE: Vance Walberg, David Douglas Jr., Jake Heidbreder

• GRAND CANYON: Bryce Drew, Jaden Henley, Nana Owusu-Anane

• NEVADA: Steve Alford, Chuck Bailey III, Tyler Rolison

• NEW MEXICO: Eric Olen, Deyton Albury, Chris Howell

• SAN DIEGO STATE: Brian Dutcher, Miles Byrd, Reese Dixon-Waters

• SAN JOSE STATE: Tim Miles, Colby Garland, Jermaine Washington

• UNLV: Josh Pastner, Naas Cunningham, Dravyn Gibbs-Lawhorn

• UTAH STATE: Jerrod Calhoun, Mason Falslev, Karson Templin

• WYOMING: Sundance Wicks, Matija Belic, Leland Walker

Geoff Grammer covers college basketball. You can reach him at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.