SAN DIEGO — Brian Dutcher has experienced all 25 seasons of Mountain West basketball and he’s never seen one as crazy as this one.
A season after Dutcher’s San Diego State Aztecs became the first Mountain West team to reach the Final Four, the conference could have a record six teams reach the NCAA Tournament.
“Unbelievable,” Dutcher said of the race in the Mountain West, which stretches from San Diego’s beaches to the towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains and into the high desert of New Mexico, where the Lobos would love to rejoin March Madness after a decade away. “It’s dynamic. You’ve just got to enjoy every win you get.”
For the longest time, several teams were within one game of the lead. The reigning regular-season and conference tournament champion Aztecs, ranked No. 21 in The Associated Press poll and led by power forward Jaedon LeDee, could have jumped into the lead two weeks ago but lost at Utah State. The No. 22 Aggies continued their unexpected run under first-year coach Danny Sprinkle when they clinched at least a share of the regular-season title by winning at San Jose State on Wednesday night.
The Aggies can claim their first outright regular-season championship with a win Saturday against New Mexico. Utah State made the NCAA Tournament last season but was picked to finish ninth in the league this year after adding 13 new players and returning zero points from last year’s team.
“You know there’s something special,” Sprinkle said. “We’ll probably realize that a lot more in a couple of years. … To have 13 brand new guys playing together, it’s pretty incredible.”
The Aztecs have no shot at the title following a four-point loss at UNLV on Tuesday night that magnified their shooting woes and road struggles. One of the worst-shooting teams in the league, the Aztecs made just 28.1% of their shots and lost their sixth conference road game. The highest seed they can get in the MWC tournament is No. 4.
That’s how wild it’s been out West. And it could get wilder if UNLV, which has won 10 of its last 11 games, continues to stay hot in next week’s conference tournament in its home arena, the Thomas &Mack Center, where the winner will clinch the league’s automatic NCAA Tournament berth.
“The key is one loss can’t knock a team out of the tournament,” New Mexico coach Richard Pitino said. “The better everybody’s doing with NET rankings and KenPom and all those things, it just helps it.”
SDSU has reached the NCAA Tournament 12 times in the Mountain West era, the first eight under coach Steve Fisher — with Dutcher as his top assistant — and the last four with Dutcher in charge. They reached the Sweet 16 in 2011 with Kawhi Leonard, and again three seasons later. Then came last year’s breakthrough, when Lamont Butler hit the biggest shot in school history, a buzzer-beater against FAU in the national semifinals that thrilled the city. The Aztecs lost to UConn in the championship game.
The MWC has had four teams in the NCAAs the last two seasons, including SDSU and Boise State both seasons. The record is five, in 2013.
In the current NET rankings, one of the major metrics used to select and seed the field of 68, the Mountain West has six programs ranked among the top 35: San Diego State (19), Boise State (25), New Mexico (26), Utah State (32), Nevada (33) and Colorado State (35).
