Mountain West conference tournament preview

This is part 21 of a 33-part series in this blog, designed to give you all the information you need to know about each conference's tournament, and the postseason prospects of every single team in the conference.

Final standings:
Boise St 14-4
San Diego St 14-4
Colorado St 13-5
Wyoming 11-7
Utah St 11-7
Fresno St 10-8
UNLV 8-10
New Mexico 7-11
Air Force 6-12
Nevada 5-13
San Jose St 0-18

Conference tournament format:  UNLV hosts in Vegas.  10 teams, straight-up bracket from Wednesday March 11 to Saturday March 14.  San Jose St is not playing (APR'd), so it's good to see that they're making sure cheaters never prosper.  Can't let that 0-18 team win a game.

Bracket:
1) Boise St vs. 8/9) New Mexico/Air Force
4) Wyoming vs. 5) Utah St
2) San Diego St vs. 7/10) UNLV/Nevada
3) Colorado St vs. 6) Fresno St

The stakes:
SDSU is playing for seeding.  Colorado St probably is too, and should be safe as long as they handle Fresno.  I've had CSU on the 9 line for seemingly forever; I can't find any motivation to move them in either direction.  Beating SDSU and Boise could really help, and I could even see the 7 line being their ceiling.  SDSU, maybe a 6.

The fun part will be Boise St, in particular because they got on the opposite side of the draw from the other 2.  Now, losing to anyone before the finals might qualify as a bad loss.  My first instinct is to say they're safe no matter what, but there are flaws within this resume.  We'd have to ignore a 4-game losing streak that included Loyola and Utah St (eh)...a road loss at Fresno (ehhhh)...and everything else was actually more or less acceptable.  Making it to the title game should be fine enough for them.

Wyoming isn't even a NIT lock.  The conference was way down, so having that 300+ non-con SoS was particularly devastating this year.  This will also doom Utah St to the CBI/CIT.

Deeper in the pack, teams will have choices on whether to play in those lesser tournaments.  Instincts say UNLV and New Mexico (still needs a win to clinch .500) would decline, while Fresno (needs 2 wins to clinch .500) would accept.