There is still a lot of basketball left to be played, but we are nearly two weeks into the 2025-26 Mountain West men’s basketball season. It’s time to overreact! Here are a few of our very brief, way-too-early overreactions to the new season!
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1. Mountain West will be a two-bid league
Just like it’s too early to make any firm conclusions, it’s too early to be focusing on bracketology and who will be dancing come March. But on the surface, the MW’s couple weeks was quite concerning.
My overreaction (fear) is that, while this is still a two-bid league, a few of these losses that UNLV, Grand Canyon and Boise State accumulated to poor competition may hurt the conference’s overall pedigree when it’s time to stack resumes.
Again, so much can change between now and January, let alone March. A few big wins, and boom! We’re back in business. The biggest to date is Utah State’s three-point win over VCU.
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This weekend does have a good slate with a couple of good opportunities, but I don’t like how they’ve fared against weaker competition so far. The obvious hope is that these teams clean up their mistakes and play their basketball from January-March, but you still need to amass big non-conference wins, collectively.
2. Nevada will be league’s worst 3-point shooting team
Last year, Nevada shot 34.1 percent from 3-point range. That’s not terrible, but they cratered to a league-worst 31.1 percent in MW play.
We’re still working with a very small sample. But the questions I had with Nevada offensively before the season have not been silenced. While they’ve picked up three wins against Louisiana Tech, Pacific and Southern Illinois, Nevada is currently shooting 26.4 percent from deep.
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While I think that there’s clear room for improvement, there’s been a lid on the rim for the Wolf Pack thru three games. There’s a long season ahead, and we’re looking at a brand new backcourt in Tayshawn Comer and Corey Camper Jr. Head coach Steve Alford’s also experimented with going 12-deep, mixing and matching different lineup combinations to see what works — and what doesn’t.
I remain quite skeptical of the team’s offensive process if they’re not generating paint touches. Elijah Price and Joel Armotrading have both been good through three games, but they’re surrounded by less-than-ideal spacing, and teams are already daring them to shoot.
We’ll see if that changes. Nevada’s backbone will have to be getting stops and pushing pace, because I’m dubious of its shot quality (and their outcome) if it’s forced to play in the half-court for long stretches at a time.
3. Utah State, Colorado State lead the charge offensively
Perhaps the two teams I’ve been impressed with most through two games are Utah State and Colorado State. We know how good San Diego State is and will be, so I’m factoring them in here.
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We’re waiting to see what they look like against better competition, but Colorado State has put up 93-plus points on Incarnate Word, Nebraska Omaha and Cal Poly. Their offense — led by Josh Pascarelli and Kyle Jorgensen — has been one of the most efficient in the country, sporting an absurd 44.4 3-point percentage with the nation’s third-highest effective field goal percentage.
I didn’t expect them to miss much of a beat with schematic continuity. But Ali Farokhmanesh’s offense has hummed. Outside of Jorgensen and Pascarelli, Jevin Muniz, Brandon Rechsteiner and Corey Booth will all be names to monitor as the season goes on.
We picked Utah State to be the league’s best offense before the season. So far, they haven’t disappointed. They weren’t efficient from beyond the arc on Wednesday against Weber State, but still scratched together 83 points.
Admittedly, I was very high on Garry Clark heading into the season, and he’s been leading the charge for possible 6MOY candidacy. MJ Collins, Karson Templin and Mason Falslev have been as advertised, while Drake Allen has been an animal defensively.
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4. UNLV’s injuries will damage season
There are new rosters all over the conference — UNLV is one of them. However, they’re down multiple injuries to transfers Myles Che — who was one of their top transfers this summer — in addition to Mason Abittan and Emmanuel Stephen.
Che could be out a while, and the Runnin’ Rebels have struggled to find any sort of solution at point guard. Not all growth is linear, so perhaps this early adversity that UNLV is enduring will be good for them as the season ages.
But I haven’t seen anything to inspire confidence through nearly two weeks — and it won’t get any easier with upcoming dates against Memphis, St. Joseph’s, Maryland, Alabama and Stanford.
