Mountain West Basketball Historical Preview
In Mountain West basketball the chaos is the pattern
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The Mountain West is an elite basketball conference. The Mountain West features some of the nation’s top teams, toughest venues, and most storied programs. Teams in the conference perform at a high level and often outperform mid-major peers. Among mid-majors, the Mountain West is a top-tier conference. It frequently leads the pack in NCAA tournament bids and NBA draft picks. With consistent programs anchoring the top of the conference and a strong middle tier, the Mountain West is among the top non-power conferences. Mountain West basketball is at the peak of entertainment and competition.
What does history teach about the future of the Mountain West? Other than a few loosely recurring themes, not much. The history of Mountain West basketball is wild and chaotic. In the Mountain West, the madness doesn’t wait for March; it begins in October.
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Very few consistent trends have cemented themselves into the history of the Mountain West, but the lack of order does not necessarily indicate a lack of pattern. In the wild west, the chaos is the pattern.
While some trends manage to survive for a long-term period of time, most of the trending patterns that dictate the Mountain West are short-term or mid-term trends that come and go adding to the chaos.
Among trends that have achieved some status of repetition are Air Force and San Jose State ending in the bottom half of the conference and San Diego State and Nevada ending at the top. Even those trends are less than reliable and have some wild exceptions. In 2003, for example, the Falcons won the regular-season title; by a relatively wide margin, too. San Diego State has broken their pattern too. In the conference’s inaugural year, the Aztecs finished in last place and didn’t win a single conference game. The Aztecs were the first of only four teams in conference history to go winless throughout conference play. Colorado State did it in 2007-08, Air Force in 2008-09, and San Jose State in 2014-15.
