What a wild week for the two big mid-major leagues out west as we get the storybook ending to WCC regular season play as we know it and the cannibalization that the MWC is known for rears its ugly head as we watch opportunities to secure a ticket to the dance squandered by two bubble teams and the top team of the league looks to be limping to the end of the regular season and raising resume questions for themselves. This week we’re going to hone in the big trends of these two leagues: tournament paths and the end of an era in the WCC.

Mountain West Conference facing NCAA Tournament disaster before league bracket is set

The week couldn’t have started any worse for the top of the conference and by proxy the league office looking for NCAA Tournament revenue shares, as Utah State, San Diego State and New Mexico all lost over the last 48 hours.

The Lobos fail to hold up their top-18 3pt shooting defense against Colorado State, who sink 11 threes to end New Mexico’s chances at winning the regular season title for the league members sticking around next season. Utah State has clinched at least a share of the title after San Diego State also lost to Boise State on the Broncos’ senior night. It’s the Aggies’ 5th conference title since joining the league.

Somehow, despite seemingly the Aztecs’ best efforts, a win against UNLV and a loss by Utah State to New Mexico gives San Diego State a share of the league regular season title. But a split trophy isn’t enough for the committee to invite you to dance.

New Mexico on the ropes

With that aforementioned loss, it’s now or never for New Mexico to get a necessary win to bolster a resumé that is 2-5 in Quad 1 opportunities and features a best win of fellow bubble team Santa Clara. Eric Olen’s team has now lost two of their last three games and must go into Logan, Utah to try and snag a marquee win.

While Utah State has lost three of its last four games, it’s lost at home just once this season. Headed into last night’s game, Basket Under Review’s Lukas Harkins had New Mexico as one of the last teams in the tournament. If they don’t win on Saturday, they could very well be waiting to hear their name called after the 68th team is revealed on Selection Sunday.

Aztecs need the autobid

This could be a squandered season for the Aztecs as they wrap up their road games for the MWC regular season and finish 5-5 outside of Viejas. After coming close to looking like a tournament team in January, Brian Dutcher’s team is 4-4 in February, with one last game left: senior night against UNLV. In a season of widecasting rotations, the Aztecs played 11 guys against the Broncos, with Reese Dixon-Waters the lone player over 25 minutes (30 minutes played) and 8 guys playing 15 to 24 minutes in a game that they were never really close in.

San Diego State’s interior has been downright brutal during this closing tailspin, culminating in the Aztecs recording just 15 rebounds against Boise State, their lowest total in the season and the lowest total in at least the last 15 seasons. In keeping with the numerology bit here, the Aztecs are also giving up 15 2nd-chance points per game in their last 5 games, which equates to 19% of their opponents’ points. That per-game average puts them in the bottom 5 percentile of the country for 2nd chance point defense.

San Diego State's MWC defensive averages for the season and their last 5 games

It looks like Dutcher’s team will need to win the autobid to make the NCAA Tournament for the sixth straight year.

Utah State seedline tanking

The Aggies don’t appear to be in any imminent danger of missing the tournament, but this is now a far cry from where we saw Jerrod Calhoun’s team projected a month ago. Utah State has looked like a completely different team on the road, also finishing .500 on the conference season when traveling. 

Seemingly every facet of Utah State’s game has fallen off a cliff over their last four games, featuring road losses to Nevada, San Diego State and a 92-65 beatdown by the hands of UNLV on Tuesday night. A team that thrives on getting out in transition, their fastbreak points have fallen from 13.3 points per game in conference play to 8 points on average over their last four contests.

Utah State’s last four opponents shot a combined average of 40.9% from the perimeter and 60.2% from inside the arc, the highest opponent average in the country for both categories in that span. MJ Collins has continued to struggle to find his three-point shot in league play. After shooting 43.9% from three in the nonconference, Collins is 32% from deep in the MWC and 28.8% in February.

The Aggies needed to dominate league play to secure an ideal seed line, given their limited Quad 1 opportunities and signature wins. Their best wins on the season are all bubble teams (VCU, San Diego State, New Mexico). If they don’t win emphatically to close out their final run of MWC games, they may find themselves in Dayton playing in the First Four.

WCC Tournament looks for one last classic before Pac-12 exodus

In a bracket that feels like it belongs in Street Fighter, the ladder bracket of the WCC is a gauntlet for the low seeds and valuable time to rest for the top of the food chain. Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s get to ice up until Monday, four days after things kick off in Vegas. Here are the storylines to see play out in the Orleans off the strip.

Seattle looks to play spoiler

The one seed of this tournament could be more valuable than even the added rest and requirement to win one game to get to the league championship. You get the luxury of avoiding the nasty side of this WCC bracket. That tough side includes Saint Mary’s, waiting for the winner of Santa Clara’s game, who waits for the winner of Pacific’s game, who waits for the winner of the game featuring sneakily one of the hottest teams in the conference: Seattle.

Offensive and Defensive Ratings over the last 3 games of the WCC season

The Red Hawks head to Sin City with a three-game winning streak that followed a heartbreaking 2 point loss to Saint Mary’s on February 18th. In this closing three-game stretch, Seattle leads the WCC in lowest offensive turnover percentage in the league (10.2%) and highest opponent turnover percentage (21.4%).

If Chris Victor’s team can continue to leverage possession advantage with their improved shooting over this final stretch into Friday, they could click and become a dangerous out for the teams waiting to play Sunday and Monday. 

Santa Clara needs two wins to keep their hopes alive

It feels pretty simple at this point. WCC Coach of the Year Herb Sendek and his team need to win two more games to feel confident heading into Selection Sunday. Bubble teams are losing left and right, but the Broncos’ ugly loss against Loyola Chicago fudges up what an eye test suggests to be one of the better mid-majors in the country, with a team and system that could give a higher seed fits in the Round of 64.

If Santa Clara is able to win their first game and win the rubber match against Saint Mary’s, you can expect the Broncos to go dancing for the first time since 1996. But that’s a tall task after losing the last matchup by 19 points and also looking overwhelmed in their other Quad 1 opportunities this season. The fun jumbo lineups and theoretical players lose their luster when facing a run of top 40 defenses in the country.

Santa Clara's shooting stats for the season and against Quad 1 teams

A neutral court and extended rest may do the Broncos good against the Gaels. Allen Graves played through a twisted ankle in Moraga and logged just 13 minutes in the season finale against Oregon State. Getting him healthy and ready to exploit the heavy-footed Saint Mary’s frontcourt is a necessity for the Broncos to have a shot in that potential matchup.  

Saint Mary’s peaking at the perfect time

You can read the sign that greets you when you walk on Saint Mary’s campus, “God is a Gael.” And the Good Lord favored the team down in Moraga to close out the WCC season and end the premier west coast rivalry against Gonzaga as it should, a split of the series matchup and the regular season title. It’s four straight claims to 1st for the tiny college in the woods of the Bay Area. 

The result feels almost too choreographed. The unstoppable force versus the immovable object trope doesn’t do it justice; how on-the-nose the ending feels in a regular-season draw. It harkens more to those Fast and Furious contracted deals where Jason Statham, Vin Diesel and The Rock could only get beaten up so much by each other. One guy couldn’t win the fight; we needed to see our smooth-skull action heroes glare and wait for their next opportunity to square off. Anyways!

As much handwringing there was about the Gaels’ resumé, Saturday resoundingly put those concerns away and, most importantly, showcased a development by sophomore Mikey Lewis that matched what we saw in the prior win against Santa Clara: the kid can create for himself and others. 

As both the Broncos and Bulldogs looked to try and exploit the size and athleticism of Joshua Dent by providing on-ball pressure and forcing the ball out of his hands, Lewis looked more than comfortable as the initiator en route to his 31 points and 4 assists against the Zags. Lewis exploited poor screen coverages all night and exploited Ike’s drops in the paint to find space to carve into the Zags' interior and finish himself or dump passes to cutters and out to shooters on the perimeter.

Lewis will need to maintain this volume and efficiency in the WCC Tournament, but if he’s dependable, the Gaels have finally found their expanded offense to provide Paulius Murauskus space and give themselves a shot against athletic teams in the NCAA Tournament.

Gonzaga’s Jalen Warley problem

Saint Mary’s home gym is about as difficult to play as a rival as there is in the country. The place is packed, it’s loud and it gets humid and hot when it’s at sell-out capacity. But maybe the biggest extenuating circumstance outside of in-game performance for Gonzaga was the absence of forward Jalen Warley, who is still trying to get right from an ongoing thigh muscle injury.

Beyond WCC Player of the Year Graham Ike, Warley may be the most impactful player on this Gonzaga roster, with Braden Huff remaining without a timetable to return from his knee injury. Warley went from utility piece to starting power forward, able to guard 1-4 at an elite level. The team leaned into a defensive-first identity because of the switchability he provided in his extended minutes. And because of his previous days as a guard for Florida State, he became the offensive initiator while Graham Ike was out and the Zags were without their two scoring post players.

Warley’s absence completely changed how Gonzaga would defend Saint Mary’s last weekend, going from Warley on Murauskus straight up to different combinations of doubles when Murauskus would get the ball defended by Tyon Grant-Foster. Losing Warley on Murauskus meant you lost Grant-Foster to throw at the group of Gael wings and guards.

Warley went from averaging 26 minutes per game in the first 10 WCC games to 18 minutes in February when the nagging injury began. Using those two time frames, he went from a 9.8% offensive rating (98th percentile in Division I) to 4.4% in February and a 4.5% steal rate (99th percentile) in his first 10 WCC games to 2.7%. His underrated offensive impact was tangible, too, going from 9.9 points per game to 5.3.

As much as Huff’s injury lowers the ceiling on this Gonzaga team, compounding the loss of Warley is catastrophic. The Zags hold a 91.1 defensive rating when Warley is on the floor, best in the country. That balloons to 101.1 when he’s off it. That 101.1 figure is still great in a vacuum, but with the offensive woes the Bulldogs have had over the last couple of months, that could mean the difference between the Round of 64 and the Round of 32, let alone the first and second weekends of the tournament.

Games to watch

  • Washington State versus the winner of Pepperdine and Portland, Friday at 6 pm PT/9 pm ET, ESPN+
  • UNLV at San Diego State, Friday at 7 pm PT/10 pm ET, CBSSN
  • Seattle versus the winner of LMU and San Diego, Friday at 8:30 pm PT/11:30 pm ET, ESPN+
  • New Mexico at Utah State, Saturday at 1 pm PT/4pm ET, Mountain West Network

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