We didn’t get our full helping of March Madness this year, but Mountain West basketball certainly gave us a taste of it as one of the only conferences to finish their conference tournament.
The Mountain West Basketball tournament ended up being absolutely wild and provided us not only with a great Cinderella but also quite a few shakeups in these power rankings. The tournament also provided us with possibly the country’s first “bid stealer” for an NCAA tournament that wasn’t meant to be.
There was quite a bit of movement in this final edition of the Mountain West power rankings, so let’s take a look at where everybody ended up as the season came to an unexpected end.
11. San Jose State (-1)
San Jose State scored a couple of strong upsets at home early in the Mountain West schedule that made it look like they might be a formidable test for traveling opponents. However, we learned over the last month and a half that this wasn’t even close to the case.
The ending to this season was absolutely miserable for the Spartans. San Jose State lost its last 10 games of the season and hasn’t won one since the end of January. Even worse, most of those losses weren’t even particularly competitive. 6 of the 10 were by 13 or more points, including the loss to New Mexico that ended their season.
The fact that they only had 2 seniors on the team should give them some hope that they have room for improvement, but they unfortunately couldn’t avoid finishing this season as the worst team in the Mountain West.