Mountain West Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2022-23 season

It was one of the strongest seasons in recent memory at the top of Mountain West Basketball last year. After non-conference play, there were four teams that looked to be in contention for an at-large bid (Boise State, Wyoming, San Diego State, and Colorado State). And in the end, all of them ended up making the 2022 NCAA Tournament.

Unfortunately, none of them made it out of the Round of 64, making a successful league campaign into a disappointing end. But they and the rest of the Mountain West are back to build off last season and a few teams who didn’t get a bid are looking to make the leap upwards.

Here are the preseason power rankings for the Mountain West this upcoming season, starting from the bottom.

The first year of the Tim Miles era was rough, with a whole bunch of newcomers. Injuries hurt the group but the good news is that unlike previous years for the Spartans, they return the top four players from last year. That includes leading scorer and passer Omari Moore (13.2 ppg and 4.6 apg), along MJ Amey, Trey Anderson, and forward Ibrahima Diallo. They added more frontcourt depth in Temple transfer Sage Tolbert III and Robert Vaihola from Fresno State.

It’s good to have a returning core to build off of but with the exception of some guys making three-pointers, San Jose State was awful in just about every other category. They’ll need multiple players to make big leaps and for some guards outside of Moore to produce in order to be more competitive in the Mountain West.