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

The Aggies suffered the second-biggest loss this offseason with Justin Bean, who led the team with 17.4 ppg and 9.9 rpg. Although his departure is massive for them, the team did try to replace them with several players from the transfer portal.

Among the newcomers in the frontcourt includes St. Joe’s transfer Taylor Funk (13.2 ppg and 6.6 rpg) 6’9 forward Daniel Akin (10.8 ppg and 8.1 rpg at Cal Baptist) and Isaac Johnson, a former top-40 prospect and transfer from Oregon. Johnson could be the breakout candidate of all of Mountain West Basketball and Utah State will need that to replace the lost frontcourt production.

There are multiple returning players on the perimeter, including starters, Rylan Jones, R.J. Eytle-Rock, and Sean Bairstow. Each of them was solid but none were double-digit scorers on offense. There have largely been no changes on the roster so including Steven Ashworth and Max Shulga, can this core be good enough to win in the Mountain West this season?

The good news is that Utah State will have one of the oldest rosters in the league, with the rotation set to have almost all juniors and seniors. They’ll need to find a breakout player in the bunch to overachieve expectations but the low ceiling gives them a large hill to climb.