Mountain West Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2021-22 season

San Jose State has been a disaster in recent years, winning just eight MWC games in the last four seasons. With this year’s hiring of Tim Miles, there’s renewed optimism that the Spartans can field a competitive team in the league in the coming years. The Spartans defense (and offense frankly) was abysmal last year and it may take some time to turn that around as Miles completely rebuilds this roster.

The top four leading scorers from last season are gone, but that might not be a bad thing as this team refreshes, even after losing top scorer Richard Washington (19.5 ppg) to a season-long suspension. The Spartans build back with a number of transfers, including Trey Anderson from South Carolina, Shon Robinson from Ole Miss, and Tibet Gorener from Arizona.

Miles will install a system much different from the fast-paced one that wasn’t working these last few years, but it’s still going to take time for Miles to get the right players to run his system.

Much of last year’s Lobos squad is gone, which includes a change in leadership. After a tumultuous run at Minnesota, Richard Pitino landed on his feet at New Mexico and had quite the offseason task rebuilding this roster. With the way that New Mexico struggled offensively and fell apart last season, en route to a last-place finish in the MWC, there’s nowhere to go but up for Pitino and the Lobos.

Guard Saquan Singleton is the best returning player and should still play a key role. Jamal Mashburn (8.2 ppg) follows Pitino from Minnesota and could become the Lobos’ top scoring option this season.

When you throw in transfers like Jaelen House from Arizona State (5.3 ppg) and sharpshooting JUCO guard KJ Jenkins, there will be plenty of new options for the Lobos this season. However, this is another program that’s thrown their roster together to fix some big holes and may need a few years to field a team that can compete at the top of the MWC.