Mountain West conference tournament preview

This is part 20 of a 32-part series.

Standings:
Nevada 15-3
Utah St 15-3
Fresno St 13-5
San Diego St 11-7
UNLV 11-7
Air Force 8-10
New Mexico 7-11
Colorado 7-11
Boise St 7-11
Wyoming 4-14
San Jose St 1-17

Format:
Standard bracket, from March 13-16.  UNLV hosts.  Because every western-based conference goes to Vegas.  Literally.

Matchups:
1) Nevada vs. 8/9) Colorado St/Boise St
4) San Diego St vs. 5) UNLV
3) Fresno St vs. 6/11) Air Force/San Jose St
2) Utah St vs. 7/10) New Mexico/Wyoming

The stakes:
Nevada's profile is quirky.  The computers say they're a top 20 team.  But the team sheet doesn't have much substance.  Their series with Utah St (which they split) are their only Q1 games.  Their non-con SoS is 82, but with 0 Q1 games among them (to be fair, they have 6 Q2 games in the non-con, and they swept them all.  One terribad loss at New Mexico.

Ultimately, what sells me is their Q2 results.  7-1...all 8 games were either road or neutral games.  So I don't think their profile will ding them too badly, even if Utah St is the only probable tournament team they played all year long.  With a record as gaudy as 28-3, my gut tells me the committee will "eye test" them up a couple seed lines, from an 8 or 9 to a 5 or 6.  Really, anywhere in that range would be reasonable to me.

Utah St.  Played a non-con SoS of 21, which is really helping.  Sure, lost to Houston and Arizona St and BYU.  That hurts the profile.  But at least there's @UC Irvine and N-St Mary's as wins.  Those are Q1 wins, folks.  They've got 3 Q1 wins in total.  Now, I think the committee will look at that with skeptical eyes, but still, 3 wins there are 3 wins.  What does hurt is just 1-3 against Q2 (@Fresno is the win).

In a normal bubble year, I can certainly see the argument against them forming.  Just one win over a bonafide tourney team (give or take a UCI).  That's normally not enough.  But bad loss avoidance (Fresno at home is the worst) plus the state of the bubble leaves them in decent shape.  I don't feel very good about this prediction, even if USU loses to Nevada in the final, but I think they're safe if they don't do something stupid.

Let's briefly talk about the MWC as a whole.  CNET 13.  That's terrible for them, and absolutely hurt both Nevada and Utah St this year.  A 24-6 MWC team is usually safe.  USU not being safe is completely on the rest of the conference.  Down year.

Fresno has an outside chance at the NIT.  Alas, @Utah St is really all they got to work with.  N-Northwestern and @SDSU are the next 2 best wins, and the non-con SoS approaches 300.