Easy, then hard
Struggling Lobos could win out in regular season play, but it figures to get tough at league tournament
It seems clear now that the “three days in March” mantra for the UNM Lobos has now grown to “four days in March.”
Any shot at an NCAA Tournament berth for at least nine of the Mountain West Conference’s 11 teams now rests on winning the league’s tournament in Las Vegas, Nev.
For the Lobos, who after Wednesday night’s loss at Utah State sit at 11-15 overall and in ninth place in the league standings with a 5-9 MWC record, even if they win their final four regular season games for a 9-9 league record, they don’t appear to hold enough tiebreakers to get to a top-five seed.
In the 11-team league, the top five seeds start tournament play in the quarterfinal round on March 14. Seeds 6-11 start in the March 13 “playin” round.
KenPom’s computer model predicts the Lobos will win their final four games — road games at San Jose State and Wyoming, home games vs. Boise State and Colorado State, all with equal or worse overall records as UNM and all with sub-.500 conference records.
“I wish I could even think that far ahead,” Lobos coach Paul Weir said Wednesday night from Logan. “We’ve got to find a way to take care of the basketball and box people out or those four games are irrelevant.”
The bright side of a possible six seed is this: It would put UNM on the opposite side of the bracket of Nevada, UNLV playing in its home gym and San Diego State, the league’s hottest team.
For Lobo fans, thinking the team has a four-game win streak in it might be a tough sell considering its longest streak of the season was three from Dec. 30 through Jan. 5, and that included an NAIA opponent.
But irrational emotions aside, be them the skepticism from the “Fire
Weir” crowd or optimism from the “but the Lobos still have more talent than anyone” crowd, here’s what the KenPom. com computer predictors say will happen over the next two and a half weeks for the Lobos and the rest of the Mountain West.
And for context, it should be noted KenPom.com has been right on 11 of UNM’s 14 league games with the three wrong being in that same headscratching eight days in January that included the Lobos beating Nevada then losing at home to UNLV and at Colorado State. All other 11 MWC games in a wildly up-and-down Lobos season have actually been correctly predicted by KenPom.
Based on the website’s gameby-game predictions, here is what the final MWC standings will look like with seed, team and final MW record in parenthesis: 1. NEVADA (16-2): Despite five games remaining against five of the top six non-Nevada teams in the standings, the Wolf Pack is projected to win out with a March 2 road game at Utah State the closest to a possible loss (it has just a 51 percent win probability). 2. UTAH STATE (14-4): The Nevada game is the only projected loss, and that is a home game that could go either way. Who knows? 3. FRESNO STATE (13-5):
Wednesday’s home loss to Air Force was a surprise, but road games at Nevada and SDSU also would have made it hard for the Bulldogs to have finished better than third. 4. UNLV (11-7): A top four finish could take some, not all, heat off Marvin Menzies. And that is what is predicted. 5. SAN DIEGO STATE (10-8):
The computers still show SDSU going 1-4 over its next five, but are any humans really betting against the Aztecs to lose four of the next five right now? 6. NEW MEXICO (9-9): Road games at the bottom two teams and home games against two teams that also have losing league records. UNM’s schedule is at its softest stretch of what became a very long season. 7. AIR FORCE (8-10): If the Falcons go 2-2 as predicted and finish tied with Boise State, Wednesday’s Air Force win over Fresno State would serve as the tiebreaker. 8. BOISE STATE (8-10): The Broncos are predicted to go 2-3 down the stretch, but the win probabilities give them an almost coin-flip chance at UNLV on March 2 (45 percent chance) and at UNM on March 6 (48 percent). 9. COLORADO STATE (7-11):
KenPom has CSU winning two more times to get to seven wins. 10. WYOMING (3-15): The Cowboys are predicted to get one more win (at San Jose State on March 6), but won’t get out of a bottom two seed. 11. SAN JOSE STATE (0-18):
They may avoid going winless, but they won’t avoid the 11 seed.