Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences.

Reader’s Take

A Look Back

• This past week in the Mountain West wasn’t exactly jam-packed full of great match-ups. New Mexico had a couple of very important games against quality opponents and came through with wins in each, but elsewhere there were relatively uninspiring games everywhere you looked. Air Force and Colorado State each played a couple games in four-team tournaments against middling competition (CSU won its tourney – the Sun Bowl Invitational in El Paso), TCU hosted a decent Tulsa team, UNLV went halfway across the Pacific to face Hawai’i, and Boise State traveled all of 22 miles to face Idaho, but there were also whitewashes against Central Arkansas and Redlands.
• And, the bad news is, with teams across the country already up to their ankles in conference play, Mountain West teams have the likes of Johnson & Wales, Houston Baptist, Utah Valley, San Diego Christian, Nebraska-Omaha, and Cal State Bakersfield on the schedule next week – truly only a schedule a mother could love.

Fun Fact of the Week

• No Mountain West team has had a sub-.500 record at any point this season. Only New Mexico has been as low as .500 at any point on the year (twice) after alternating wins and losses in their first four games of the year.

Team of the Week

• New Mexico – Easy choice here, as the Lobos beefed up their NCAA Tournament credentials this week by knocking off Saint Louis (RPI #59) in Albuquerque on Saturday after having gained revenge on in-state rival New Mexico State earlier in the week. They still are only #50 in the nation in RPI, but should have a chance to bolster than number against a strong conference this season. And, more importantly, they are playing better as a team than they were early in the season. In recent weeks, Drew Gordon has been a monster on the glass, while he and Tony Snell, Kendall Williams, Jamal Fenton, Chad Adams, and Phillip McDonald have all scored in double figures at least once in their last four games. Read the rest of this entry »

Reader’s Take

A Look Back

It’s been a relatively quiet week around the Mountain West as teams took a bit of a break to celebrate the holidays. However, despite just eight games in the past week, we’ve had three fairly significant injuries. Boise State was the team hardest hit, as it lost freshman wing Igor Hadziomerovic to a broken foot and will likely play the rest of the season without him, while fellow freshman Anthony Drmic, the team’s leading scorer, missed the Broncos’ visit to Iowa with a sprained ankle. Meanwhile, Air Force lost is leading scorer, Michael Lyons, early in its visit to Spokane to face Gonzaga to a sprained ankle of his own. He never returned to a game in which the Falcons possibly could have challenged the Bulldogs, and the worst-case scenario for Lyons is not a good one. Since he sustained a high-ankle sprain, he could miss as many as six weeks, but a lot depends on how he reacts. It is possible he could be back as soon as this weekend, but ideally he would be back by January 14 when the Falcons travel to Boise State to open the conference season.

Another prominent MW player missed a game this week for a different reason, however, as New Mexico’s Kendall Williams sat out the Lobos’ Thursday game against UMKC as punishment from head coach Steve Alford for a poor academic fall semester. Williams is not in any way academically ineligible, and certainly the Lobos did just fine without him against middling competition, but give credit to Alford for laying down the law.

Team of the Week

UNLV – The Runnin’ Rebels take this honor down for the second straight week on the strength of its demolition of California on Friday. UNLV used a 31-12 run to close the first half to build a 20-point halftime lead, then led by as many as 27 in the second half before coasting home to a 17-point win. Anthony Marshall led the way in style with 22 points, nine rebounds, and three steals, while Oscar Bellfield handed out 11 assists and the Rebels dominated every facet of the game. UNLV still has to travel to Hawaii and Cal State Bakersfield in their non-conference (along with hosting Central Arkansas), but if everything holds up, they should enter conference play with a 16-2 record, including wins over North Carolina, Illinois and California and a good shot at a solid seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Dorian Green Had A Career Game For CSU Against Northern Colorado, Knocking Down Eight Threes (photo credit: Sam Noblett, The Rocky Mountain Collegian)

Player of the Week

Dorian Green, Jr, Colorado State – Green caught absolute fire Thursday night for the Rams, hitting eight-of-ten three-pointers and 11-of-16 from the field while exploding for a career-high 36 points in a win over Northern Colorado. After an excellent freshman season in Fort Collins, Green took a step back last season, seeing his scoring and shooting numbers take a healthy dip. But in his third season, Green has been rock-solid shooting the ball, hitting 58.7% of his three-point attempts this year. He’s also picked up his rebounding numbers for the third year running, (even adding his first-career double-digit rebounding game against Duke a couple weeks back) while helping out with the ballhandling duties and providing an explosive offensive threat in a Ram backcourt made up of multiple excellent shooters.

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Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and the Pac-12 Conferences.

Reader’s Take

A Look Back

After a slow week for finals (just seven games between December 10 and December 18), things picked up against for the Mountain West last night, with six teams in action. All told, MW teams went 10-3 since the last time we did this, with two of those three losses coming at the hands of a sneaky good Denver team. The other loss was TCU getting blown out at USC, but aside from that game, MW teams scored wins over teams from the Big Ten (UNLV over Illinois) and the Big 12 (New Mexico over Oklahoma State), bringing the conference’s record on the year against teams from BCS conferences to 15-8.

Team of the Week

UNLV – Let’s not overthink this; the Runnin’ Rebels are the Mountain West team of the week on the strength of posting the best win of the week, a 64-48 thumping of previously undefeated Illinois in an anything-but-neutral site game in Chicago. Combined with a sluggish win over UTEP and a by-the-numbers slog over Louisiana-Monroe, UNLV, ranked #20 in this week’s RTC Top 25, improved to 12-2 on the season. And, even better, in the win Monday over ULM, they picked up another weapon, as point guard Reggie Smith, a transfer from Marquette, got his first minutes of the season after becoming eligible at the semester break. He played just nine minutes, but hit a three-pointer, grabbed a couple offensive rebounds and handed out an assist (we’ll overlook the three turnovers for today) in his first action.

Anthony Marshall, Brice Massamba And The Rest Of The Runnin' Rebels Notched A Big Win Over Illinois This Past Weekend (photo credit: Sam Morris, Las Vegas Sun)

Player of the Week and Newcomer of the Week

Hugh Greenwood, Fr, New Mexico –The freshman from Australia has earned his accolades this season mainly by not turning the ball over, admittedly a great characteristic for a point guard to have. Five different times this season he has played at least 25 minutes in a game without a single turnover, and his 3.2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio is 19^th in the nation among players with 20 or more assists. But this weekend, in the Lobos win over Oklahoma State, Greenwood showed that he can also be called upon to score in the clutch when needed. After UNM had given up a 13-point 2^nd half lead to allow OSU to take a one-point lead, Greenwood sparked a 14-3 run to close out the win for his squad, scoring eight points (including a couple of threes), grabbing two rebounds and snatching a steal over that stretch. After four years of Dairese Gary being the floor general in The Pit, Greenwood is well on his way to living up to that precedent.

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Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and Pac-12 conferences.

Reader’s Take

A Look Back

This week marked the start of a relatively quiet time in the Mountain West schedule. With the MW/MVC Challenge and early season tournaments a thing of the past, and with the combination of finals, holidays and a late start to conference play, we’re treated to almost a month worth of sleepy matchups. We’ve still got a handful of interesting games, however, like the UNLV-Wisconsin matchup this past week, or the upcoming Rebels’ matchups with Illinois and Cal (other games of note include New Mexico-Oklahoma State and Boise State-Iowa). But for every one of those types of games, we’ve got a UC Riverside-San Diego State or Sioux Falls-Wyoming snoozefest to keep us in check. Despite the fact that the Mountain West currently ranks fourth among all conferences in RPI, you can expect that the anticipated dive in strength of schedule over the next month will hurt the conference’s member institutions when it comes to selection and seeding for the NCAA Tournament.

Team of the Week

Air Force, Led By Michael Lyons, Won Both Their Games This Week By An Average Of 16 Points (Julie Jacobson/AP)

• Air Force – The Falcons are my team of the week, almost by default. They are the only team in the conference to win two games this week, and they did so in convincing fashion, knocking off Wright State by 21, then taking care of Arkansas-Pine Bluff by 12. The Falcons used suffocating defense to limit WSU to just 9-of-46 shooting from the field and coasted enough to allow a whopping 17 players to get playing time in the game. Senior guard Michael Lyons led the way in both games, and is now averaging 19 points (best in the conference) and 5.4 rebounds per game (#11 in the conference), while Mike Fitzgerald busted out with six threes on his way to a career-high 19 against UAPB. The Academy is now 5-2 on the season, with the two losses (to Colorado and Drake) coming by a combined total of just five points.

Player of the Week

• DeShawn Stephens, Jr, San Diego State – In a week where there was no runaway winner, we’re going to take this opportunity to recognize Stephens, a junior college transfer in his first year on Montezuma Mesa. With the Aztecs woefully thin up front to begin with, more minutes opened up for Stephens when senior big man Tim Shelton was limited to just seven minutes by yet another knee injury in their game against cross-town foe San Diego. Stephens, a quick learner who didn’t play basketball in high school, responded with 16 points and nine rebounds in the Aztecs win, and should be in line for more minutes from here on out, as he is already arguably the best SDSU big man.

Newcomer of the Week

• Stephens – The 6″8″, 215-pound Los Angeles native is also converted 7-of-8 shots in the victory over San Diego.
  

Andrew Murawa is the Pac-12 and Mountain West correspondent for RTC and a microsite writer. You can find him on Twitter @amurawa.

Question: Which Non-BCS League Will Be the Best This Season?

In each of the past four years, the Mountain West Conference, Conference USA, Atlantic 10 and Missouri Valley Conference have all been ranked by Ken Pomeroy somewhere between the seventh- and tenth-best conferences in the nation. Going back nine years, at least three of those conferences have been among the top ten conferences in the nation every season, and no other non-BCS conference outside of these four has rated higher than ninth in that span. Now, as good as the Colonial may be this year, as good as the West Coast Conference or even the MAAC may be this season, I’m willing to wager that this year will be no different. One of the MW, the A-10, the MVC or C-USA will be the best non-power conference this season.

The Mountain West Will Take a Step Back With Losses of SDSU Stars (and BYU)

Further, I’ll be willing to wager that the Mountain West, a conference that has only once in that span ranked lower than eighth, will not be the best of those conferences this season. Last year as it rode BYU and San Diego State (not to mention UNLV, Colorado State and New Mexico), it was almost unquestionably the best non-power conference. But, gone are Jimmer Fredette and Kawhi Leonard. And in fact, BYU is gone altogether, as is Utah. UNLV and New Mexico return, and both of them will be very good, but SDSU will take a big step back this season, Colorado State looks to be ordinary, and the rest of the conference ranges from unspectacular to bad.

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1. It’s official: TCU has accepted an invitation to join the Big 12, and it will formally become a member on July 1, 2012. If you’re keeping track, the Big 12 marks the fifth league the Horned Frogs have accepted an invite from since 1996, along with the WAC, C-USA, Mountain West and Big East. With TCU officially in the fold, the attention now turns to the Big 12’s additional options during this time of Realignment Apocalypse.
2. Speaking of those options, how does Notre Dame sound on the basketball side? A report obtained by the Associated Press mostly centered around Missouri’s conference affiliation, but it also included a small piece of information about the Irish: apparently, they are mentioned in the document as a potential Big 12 target for all sports besides football. This is nothing more than wild speculation, but that’s what realignment is all about, right?
3. The news about Notre Dame wasn’t the important part of that document, though. It was all about Missouri‘s possible move to the SEC– and the financial impact of that scenario. The school could make up to $12 million annually, and the report said the SEC would not significantly harm the university’s academic reputation. Interestingly, MU would actually rank lower in average SAT scores if it moved from the Big 12 to the SEC, though.
4. Staying with Missouri, the end of the bench at Mizzou Arena just got a little more crowded. Frank Haith already added walk-ons Tony Lester and Danny Feldmann this summer, and now KOMU-TV’s Eric Blumberg reports that he’s added forward Andy Rosburg. That news actually has major implications for Missouri’s program, considering Rosburg’s brother, Ryan, is a 6’9″ high school senior on the Tigers’ radar. According to Rivals.com, Tennessee, Virginia, Virginia Tech and a load of other schools have already offered the younger Rosburg a scholarship. Perhaps the presence of his older brother in Columbia will be enough to sway him — at least that’s what Haith certainly is hoping.
5. With Midnight Madness just days away, the Big 12 announced last week that three teams from the league will participate in ESPN’s coverage of the event this Friday. Scrimmages from Baylor, Kansas and Texas A&M will all air on ESPNU, and it’s hardly surprising that the network chose three of the Big 12’s main title contenders for national exposure.

Now that we’ve spent the last six weeks reviewing most of the Division I conferences, let’s take a look back at the entire list with the summer #1 power ranking for each as we head into the fall…  [ed note: to see all of the Summer Updates in order of release, click here]

• ACC (Matt Patton) – #1 North Carolina
• America East (John Templon) – #1 Boston University
• Atlantic 10 (Joe Dzuback) – #1 Xavier
• Big East (Brian Otskey) – #1 Syracuse
• Big South (Mark Bryant) – #1 UNC-Asheville
• Big Ten (Will Green) – #1 Ohio State
• Big 12 (Evan Pfaff) – #1 Baylor
• Conference USA (Steve Coulter) – #1 Memphis
• Horizon League (Jimmy Lemke) – #1 Detroit
• Ivy League (Howard Hochman) – #1 Harvard
• MAAC (Ray Floriani) – #1 Iona
• Missouri Valley (Patrick Marshall) – #1 Wichita State
• Mountain West (Drew Murawa) – #1 New Mexico
• NEC (Ray Floriani) – #1 Central Connecticut
• Ohio Valley (Catlin Bogard) – #1 Tennessee Tech
• Pac-12 (Drew Murawa) – #1 California
• Patriot League (Kevin Doyle) – #1 Bucknell
• SEC (Gerald Smith) – #1 Vanderbilt
• Summit League (Eli Linton) – #1 Oakland
• Sun Belt (Danny Spewak) – #1 Florida Atlantic
• WAC (Sam Wasson) – #1 Nevada
• WCC (Will Green) – #1 Gonzaga

Andrew Murawa is an RTC correspondent and columnist.  He takes a look at the potential fallout from a Texas A&M move to the SEC, viewing it as still more fallout from 2010’s conference realignment maneuvering.  

It’s baa-aack.

A year after the Big 12 and Mountain West (among others) averted Armageddon in a nationwide game of conference realignment, it appears things are on the move again. Last year’s juggling of teams between conferences ended with the Big Ten adding Nebraska, the Pac-10 expanding to 12 with the addition of Colorado and Utah, and the Mountain West adding Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada, just as BYU went independent and TCU threw in with its most obvious natural rivals in the Big East (ahem). But, all things considered, the wildest potential moves from last year’s round of positioning failed to materialize. However, there were some hurt feelings then as a result not only of the shakeup, but also as a result of some of the new television contracts that were negotiated. And now, with Texas A&M seemingly locked on moving to the SEC in 2012, it appears that Texas’ decision to strike out on its own in creating the Longhorn Television network is the primary force generating what could be the second set of conference realignment waves.

Will This Become an SEC Road Trip in 2012?

As mentioned above, all signs point to an A&M move to the SEC; the only thing missing is an official announcement. A special  regents meeting will take place Monday afternoon, with one agenda item discussing the “Authorization for the President to Take All Actions Relating to Texas A&M University’s Athletic Conference Alignment.”  Aggie fans and administrators have long bristled at the uneven playing field in the Big 12 (heavily tilted in Texas’ favor), a sentiment that was only further fueled in recent months as the Longhorn Network and ESPN discussed the possibility of airing the high school games of potential Texas recruits, a possibility that has since been squashed by the NCAA. Nevertheless, it appears that A&M’s flirtations with the SEC, which date back to last year’s near destruction of the Big 12, are about to be consummated. The question is what happens next. An SEC invitation to Texas A&M is likely predicated on their ability to secure a 14^th team for their conference with potential invitees including Clemson, Florida State, Missouri, and even potentially North Carolina, among others. However, with the SEC currently near the start of a 15-year/$209 million television contact with ESPN and CBS, the addition of one team, two teams or four teams likely means a reduced piece of the pie for each school. There may be room for renegotiating a bit based on the addition of new teams and new markets, but all indications are that as more teams are added to the conference, each individual member school pockets less, with the new invitees potentially getting an even thinner end of the stick. While the A&M move has been reported as a nearly done deal, there are still quite a few details that need to be worked out.

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RTC’s Kevin Doyle, author of the weekly column, The Other 26, and the Patriot League Correspondent, will be providing conference tournament previews for all non-BCS conferences.

With three conference tournaments concluding last night, it is only appropriate that five more get underway today. Conference USA and the Southland Conference are two of the most balanced leagues in the nation, while the WAC and Mountain West were just the opposite as they were dominated at the top. The SWAC is always a bit of a mystery come Championship Week and tournament time, but Texas Southern is the class of the league this year and will no doubt do their best to bring respect to the league if they are fortunate enough to advance to the Dance.

Conference USA

The Favorite: UAB won the regular season title with a 12-4 record, but that means very little in the ultra competitive CUSA this season as five teams are just behind the Blazers. There is something to be said though about UAB’s strong play down the stretch and the steady play of Jamarr Sanders and Cameron Moore. These reasons alone amidst several injuries that Mike Davis‘ club has overcome makes UAB the slight favorite over the rest of the bunch.

Dark Horse: Southern Mississippi is one the teams that are nipping at UAB’s heels. Although they fell in their last three games of the regular season, Larry Eustachy’s squad proved throughout the year they can beat anyone in the conference. Having Gary Flowers roam around the pain never hurts either.

Who’s Hot: UAB has won their last four games and seven of eight heading into the tournament. As well as UAB is playing, it would be very easy for that to stop on a dime. Throughout each week during the conference schedule, it appeared that one team in CUSA was emerging as the top dog, but they would quickly fade. Can UAB keep their streak going all the way into the NCAA Tournament?

Player to Watch: Papa Dia, Southern Methodist’s senior forward all the way from Senegal, is enjoying the best season of his career as he is averaging 18.5 points and 9 rebounds a game. In each of the previous three seasons, SMU has been below .500; Dia and his teammates clearly have something to prove in this tournament.

First-Round Upset:  Central Florida over East Carolina. UCF was the nation’s favorite story in the early going as they jumped out to a 14-0 record with wins over Florida, Miami (FL), and Princeton. The Knights then went onto lose eight straight games, thus proving that their early success was a fluke. Now, UCF has won five of seven games and if they can regain that success they had in those 14 games, a victory over East Carolina is absolutely within reach.

How’d They Fare? After going 7-9 in the conference, Houston caught fire in the tournament to surprise everyone by winning the title. In doing so, the Cougars stole a bid from a team on the bubble and earned a #13 seed in the Tournament where they lost to Maryland 89-77. UTEP—the team Houston beat to advance onward—was trounced by Butler as a #12 seed.

Interesting Fact: The last team to win an NCAA Tournament game hailing from Conference USA not named Memphis was Louisville in the 2005 Tournament. The ‘Ville advanced all the way to the Final Four that year where they lost to Illinois 57-52 in the semifinals. Both UAB and Cincinnati also won Tournament games that year.

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Kraig Williams is an RTC contributor.  He lives in Utah and has witnessed the Jimmer Phenomenon closely over these last four years.

The Cult of The Jimmer grows every day. Fredette finds converts not with a door-to-door approach but with word of mouth and YouTube videos. He wins over non-believers with an effortless jumpshot and a quick release that is nearly impossible to defend. Fredette does not wear a suit and tie with a name tag on his breast pocket while converting members. Instead he wears a tank top with his name on the back and the number 32 below, a combo that is often copied on the shirts of 22,000+ fans in the Marriott Center, almost all of whom came to see him play.

The Cult of the Jimmer is Reaching Biblical Proportions

To understand The Cult of The Jimmer, it is important to understand the culture of basketball in Utah. The Beehive State loves its hoops; with the notable exception of Indiana, there are few places that love basketball more. Every LDS church house has a small basketball gym inside. These gyms host scores of underground pick-up games during the year and organized leagues of church ball, the unofficial slogan of which is “The brawl that begins with a prayer.” Utah only has one professional sport, the NBA, where the beloved Jazz dominated the Western Conference for years. Every self-respecting boy who grew up in Utah in the last 20 years dreamed of one day being the next John Stockton or Karl Malone. Even lesser stars like Jeff Hornacek, Byron Russell and Antoine Carr are all revered to this day.

It has been a long time since the Marriott Center has been the place to be seen on the BYU campus, and Fredette is the reason why it is en vogue this season. The arena is full almost every night the Cougars are in town, no small accomplishment for a building that seats 22,700 people. In a year where college basketball has lacked a mainstream superstar, Fredette has filled the void. Locally while the Jazz are floundering in another so-so season, the Cougars have been steadily grabbing the headlines. Fredette has gotten so much national attention that the Salt Lake City’s Deseret News has been doing stories on people doing stories on Fredette, or stories on who is tweeting about Fredette, all of which are warranted by the people wanting to read stories on their newest hero. So few are the dissenters of the cult of Jimmer that they are publically mocked online and nobody bats an eyelash.

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