League buzzes about parity in ‘04

Steve Guiremand

Friday, Jan. 9, 2004 | 10:12 a.m.

G -- Nick Jacobson, 6-4, Sr., Utah

F -- Danny Granger, 6-8, Jr., New Mexico

F -- Andrew Bogut, 6-10, Fr., BYU

F/C -- Rafael Araujo, 6-11, Sr., BYU

C -- Matt Nelson, 7-0, Jr., Colorado State

All-Newcomer Team

G -- Wesley Stokes, 6-0, Jr., San Diego State

G/F -- Romel Beck, 6-7, Jr. UNLV

F -- Odartey Blankson, 6-7, Jr. UNLV

F -- Danny Granger, 6-8, Jr., New Mexico

F -- Andrew Bogut, 6-10, Fr. Utah

Awards

Most Valuable Player -- Rafael Araujo, 6-11, Sr., BYU

Top NBA Prospect -- Andrew Bogut, 6-10, Fr., Utah

Best Shooter -- Nick Jacobson, 6-4, Sr., Utah

Best Defender -- Joel Gerlach, 6-6, Sr., Air Force

Best Rebounder -- Odartey Blankson, 6-7, Jr., UNLV

Best Dunker -- Demetrius Hunter, 6-2, Sr., UNLV

Best Coach -- Rick Majerus, Utah

Team On The Rise -- New Mexico

Team On The Decline -- Wyoming

Fasten your seatbelts. Get ready for some real white-knucklers. It's not for the faint of heart.

All those well-worn cliches could come in handy in trying to describe the 2004 Mountain West Conference men's basketball race which begins on Monday night.

Simply put, this figures to be the most competitive MWC race yet with six of the conference's eight teams ranked in the top 100 RPI at the start of the week while the two teams that failed to crack that list, New Mexico (No. 132) and Air Force (No. 148), are playing as well if not better than any teams in the conference right now.

Most coaches agree that defending co-champions BYU and Utah are the teams to beat in the race again. But both of those schools may be hard-pressed to match last year's top conference marks of 11-3.

"I think BYU is probably the odds-on favorite," said Colorado State coach Dale Layer, whose team was the surprise winner of last year's Mountain West Conference postseason tournament in Las Vegas. "Utah is probably second in line. But you could probably put the other six teams in a hat and juggle them up."

"It's tough," San Diego State coach Steve Fisher said. "This league is very, very difficult. If you want to win, you've got to be prepared every game."

"I can't fathom a team going 14-0 in the Mountain West this year," conference commissioner Craig Thompson added.

UNLV coach Charlie Spoonhour, whose team tied Wyoming for third place a year ago with an 8-6 league mark, agrees.

"I just think there's going to be a lot of losses this year in our league," Spoonhour said. "I don't see any easy games anywhere. The fewest losses of any team (in the conference) right now is Air Force (2)."

Indeed, the days of being able to pencil in an automatic "W" by the Falcons are long gone. Joe Scott's squad has already defeated two NCAA tournament teams from a year ago -- Wisconsin-Milwaukee (71-49) and Cal (49-44) in Berkeley -- and lead the nation in scoring defense allowing just 48.7 points per game. Nine of the first 10 teams that Air Force has played have scored 20 or fewer points in the first half while Cal was held to just 12 points in the second half by the Falcons.

San Diego State, which won just four games in each of the two previous seasons before Fisher's arrival in 1999-2000, notched nine wins this year at the second earliest date in the school's 83 years of playing basketball. The Aztecs more than held their own in a 83-71 loss at Pac-10 heavyweight Arizona two weeks ago.

"I think early on (in Mountain West Conference play) San Diego State and Air Force were two schools people would say, 'win, win,' " Fisher said. "Not anymore."

Even Wyoming coach Steve McClain, whose team has struggled perhaps more than any other team in the MWC in non-conference play, believes his team has a chance to compete for the championship.

"I think the league is wide open," McClain said. "I think everybody has shown that they can be very good and I think everybody has shown that they can be beat. I think we have as good a chance as anybody."

The key as usual to winning a championship will be holding serve at home while trying to sneak three or four road victories.

"You're not going to go anywhere and win on the road unless you play very good -- and even that doesn't guarantee you will," BYU coach Steve Cleveland said.

The Cougars (10-3) have won 55 of their past 56 games at the Marriott Center. Combine that with the fact the Cougars return four starters from last year's co-champs including 6-foot-11, 280-pound center Rafael Araujo and it's easy to see why BYU enters conference play with the biggest bull's-eye on its jersey.

"I don't give a lot of credence to those kinds of things," Cleveland said of preseason polls. "The two years we've won the league we were picked fourth. What does that say about those?"

Not much ... especially this year.