Mountain West Basketball power rankings: Lobos tumble, Rams climb

9. Fresno State

Deciding whether or not to put Fresno State above San Jose State wasn’t easy. They have identical conference records and basically the same overall record. Fresno State barely edged past San Jose for three reasons. One is a very convincing win over SJSU, where they beat the Spartans by 15 at home. The second is because they have played arguably the toughest schedule yet in the Mountain West. They are the only team who has already been forced to play San Diego State twice.

They also had to play Utah State in Utah back in December when they were playing better and they’ve been much better at home on the road. They’ve also already had to play 2nd place UNLV and a road game against New Mexico while they still had Carlton Bragg. The 3rd reason is that they have been surprisingly competitive even in their losses. Both of their losses to San  Diego State were hard-fought and both were by 9 points. Their loss to UNLV came by 1. The loss at Utah State was by 7. Even their loss to New Mexico was more competitive than the final score showed.

Fresno State had a decent week this week considering it included a game against San Diego State. Their other game was a 15-point win over Wyoming on Saturday. That win combined with their lack of a bad in-conference loss this season is enough for them to take 9th place in this set of power rankings.