Around the Mountain: Will brutal first week haunt league come March?

Welp, that didn’t go as planned.

Sure, not every fan base felt the pain of the brutal showing by the Mountain West in the first week of the season, but make no mistake, there’s a good chance everyone will be feeling it a bit in March.

The league that has had 18 teams in the NCAA Tournament the past four years — four apiece in 2025, 2023 and 2022 and six in 2024 — seems to have already met its quota for bad nonconference losses, and it took just five days to get there.

It’s the collective building of résumés in nonconference play that built the league’s computer metrics high enough so that league play often helped, and did not hurt, postseason chances.

So, what happened last week?

Monday: Boise State lost at home to Division II Hawaii Pacific, where Zane Gaul plays. (That part isn’t really all that important to this article, but the 6-foot-10 center was a four-year teammate of current Lobo freshman guard Uriah Tenette at Prescott High School in Arizona and I figured this would be a good way to get that note in).

Tuesday: UNLV lost as a 16.5-point favorite to UT Martin in the Thomas & Mack Center in the coaching debut of Josh Pastner.

Wednesday: Fresno State, albeit not highly regarded in general, lost at home to South Carolina Upstate.

Thursday: No Mountain West home court upsets! (Note: There were also no Mountain West teams with a game.)

Friday: League newcomer Grand Canyon lost as a 15.5-point favorite at home to Youngstown State.

Those aren’t just losses, they’re the type of losses that skew computer ratings drastically. For a conference on the outside of the power structure, it’s losses like those, and the affect they have on the computer rankings of a whole league, that really matter come March.

But, Boise State?

Let’s be clear. The Boise State loss won’t hurt the computer metrics. Why? Because nobody wants teams padding their computer rankings by demolishing Division II opponents, so while HPU can count the game as a win, it won’t actually help (or hurt) computer ratings.

Crazy as it may sound, Boise State — the Mountain West’s preseason No. 3 team who lost on their home court to a D-II team — actually climbed nine spots, from 53 to 44, in the KenPom ratings because all that metric took into account was the Broncos roughing up a really good Utah Valley team on Saturday.

Players of the week

Here are the league’s weekly award winners:

MW Player of the Week: F Kyle Jorgensen, Colorado State — Averaged 20 points, 9.0 rebounds and shot 64.7% in two wins over Incarnate Word and Omaha.

MW Freshman of the Week: G Naz Meyer, Wyoming — Averaged 18.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists in wins over D-II Northern State and Cal-State Fullerton.

But how about …

Here’s a look at players that maybe should have won a weekly honor:

M.J. Collins: The 6-foot-4 Utah State guard, who transferred from Vanderbilt and was at Virginia Tech for two seasons before that, might be the next in line in Logan to drive the league crazy. After scoring 20 points just once his his first three seasons and scoring more than 15 only four times in those three seasons, Collins broke onto the Mountain West scene last week scoring 22 and 23 and shooting 65.4% in two Aggies wins.

Colby Garland: Tim Miles’ new 6-0 point guard leads the league in scoring through the first week at 25.5 points per game (30 in a loss at UC Santa Barbara and 21 in a loss at Utah). The transfer from Longwood (and Drake before that) did his damage inside the arc, hitting 19-of-27 2-pointers (70.4%) and attempting only three 3-pointers (he made one). He also averaged 4.0 assists and 2.0 steals.

Poll position

No Mountain West hoops team was voted into the Associated Press Top 25 released on Monday, though two teams received votes.

San Diego State: 67 points, two spots outside of the poll, appeared on 17 ballots, with a top ranking of 16 by Mark Berman of the Roanoke (Virginia) Times.

Utah State: One point, 14 spots outside of the poll, appeared on one ballot at No. 25 by Berman.

My five

Here are five nonconference Mountain West games I’m looking forward to this week (listed in order of when they’re played):

Montana at UNLV: Tuesday, 8 p.m. (Las Vegas) — Aside from Montana being a solid team with a respected coach in Travis DeCuire, the Grizzlies boast Albuquerque’s own Kenyon Aguino, a 6-foot-7 forward from Volcano Vista, in the starting lineup. Aguino has scored in double figures in two of his three college games.

Weber State at Utah State: Wednesday, 7 p.m. (Logan, Utah) — In-state games always have a chance of upsets, but this go ‘round brings a Weber State team that just took Utah to overtime in Salt Lake on Saturday.

Nevada at Santa Clara: Saturday, 5 p.m. (Santa Clara, California) — I’ll give a slight edge here over Grand Canyon at Saint Louis as Nevada and Santa Clara are top 100 teams who are future Lobo opponents. Veteran coaches Steve Alford and Herb Sendek went 1-1 against each other in their Pac-12 days.

New Mexico at New Mexico State: Saturday, 7 p.m. (Pan Am Center in Las Cruces) — Hooten’s teams have a physical style I’ve not yet been convinced won’t cause issues for the Lobos, but the Aggies will also be playing their first Division I opponent, while UNM will be playing its fourth.

UNLV at Memphis: Sunday, 3 p.m. (Memphis, Tennessee) — Pastner is back to his old stomping grounds where he coached the first seven seasons of his career and took the Tigers to four NCAA Tournaments (they’ve only been to three in the nine years since he left).