Mountain West Wire

Jeremy, Andy and Larry are back to take a look at the Mountain West coaching searches that came to an end and others that are heating up. New Mexico landed on Richard Pitino who was recently let go at Minnesota after another subpar year. He is becoming a Lobo partly due to his connection with New Mexico AD Eddie Nunez and also Bill Donovan who was Nunez's coach when Donovan was winning national titles at Florida. The move makes sense in that regards and Pitino is a fine hire as there were worse options out there but not many that were really better. It came down to Tim Miles who most recently was at Nebraska and helped build up Colorado State before. Overall, it was a nice hire.

The move that almost came out of nowhere was T.J. Otzelberger leaving UNLV for the Iowa State job. This was a move up despite Otzelberger having a 29-30 record in his two years in Las Vegas. As for who will replace him, all three of us are throwing darts because UNLV fancies itself as a big time job but it hasn't been nationally relevant in a decade. One name that is safe and could work out is Todd Simon who is at Southern Utah and spent time as an assistant at UNLV, a short stint as the interim head coach, and was the Findlay Prep head coach.

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Andy and Jeremy are back to give their final thoughts on how many Mountain West teams will make the field of 68. San Diego State earned the auto bid and Utah State seems likely but beyond that Boise State and Colorado State are poised for the NIT. With how the pandemic has been going, who knows if any of the Mountain West teams will get the call up as replacements.

The two also go over the conference tournament as it went mostly as chalk. We gave some props to Wyoming and looked at how San Diego State was in full control of the title game vs. Utah State.

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Jeremy and Andy are back to preview the Mountain West tournament that starts this week. The big question they go over is what is the best way for the conference to get more than two teams in the NCAA Tournament? Four is off the table and it might take some bracket ninja work to even get to three teams in the Big Dance. There are plenty of options they go over, including an interesting one about Nevada making it to the title game, or San Diego State falling asleep at the wheel and not advancing past the quarterfinal round. The teams that feel the most safe are San Diego State as a lock and then Colorado State, Boise State, and Utah State in that order to get into the field. Making the title game is a big deal for the non-Aztecs teams. The duo also go over the all-conference awards from our website, beat writers and the coaches.

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Jeremy and Matt are back to take a look at the Mountain West football schedule that was recently released. The two go over the full schedule and look at what teams have it easy and what teams have it hard, spoiler: it is more hard than easy with the depth of the Mountain West this year.

We pick our favorite weekends of the seasons and have a few issues with how the league set up its final few weeks of the schedule.

They also get into some Colorado State spring football and tell coaches to quit comparing starting quarterbacks to NFL greats.

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This is our annual one-off and non-sports podcast. Jeremy is joined by Matt and Brandon to discuss the 2021 edition of MarchXness and this year's version is the best 64 grunge bands stemming from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. The trio go through the bracket, which you all can fill out here. They discuss what songs and bands should not belong and what is missing from the grunge, and why the heck is Weird Al in this group. We sample some songs we may have never knew the names of but certainly knew the song itself. They go through upsets, 12 vs. 5, underdogs and name recognition. They end the show going with their picks and voting for who should be crowned No. 1 of March Pladiness. Voting begins March 1, so get your brackets ready and go vote.

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Andy and Jeremy are back to go over the latest news in the Mountain West hoops landscape. The first big piece of news is that the conference has decided to take the off week leading up to the Mountain West tournament to make up a few missed games. The games are not a series like they have been all year but some are playing one game, some are playing two different teams, and Air Force is the only team sitting this out. The rest of the show the two get into the huge series between San Diego State and Boise State, plus Nevada going to Utah State. Those games have a big impact on who can win the conference but also can help or in some cases hurt NCAA at-large chances.

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Jeremy and Matt are back to talk about Bill C's initial SP+ rankings and our staff's power poll for the first crack at how the 2021 season could look like. The early perception is that the Mountain West is going to be very deep and competitive in 2021. They discuss what teams could surprise and who is overvalued and undervalued among our staff composite poll.

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Andy and Jeremy are back to talk some Mountain West hoops, or really just college basketball with Gonzaga and BYU in the WCC possibly not playing in the conference tournament which could cause some interesting scenarios like would that league still award its automatic bid to the conference tournament champion without its two best teams? That is when things get weird if that happens and bids are stolen.

How would the Mountain West handle this if say San Diego State or the highest rated NET team did this?

They do discuss the Jalen Johnson news about if he really quit or opted out of a season during a pandemic, it can be both.

There is one big series this week with Boise State taking on Utah State and we are bummed that Colorado State and Nevada series is not going to be played this week.

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Jeremy and Matt are back after a little break to talk about some college football and specifically the return of EA Sports bringing back the video game and we discuss what we want to see in the game.

We also bring on Michael Katz who covers Wyoming for WyoSports.net to discuss the new hire of Tim Polasek who comes in from Iowa to be the offensive coordinator to replace Brent Vigen who left to become the head coach at Montana State.

The main question is how different the offense will be and if it will be better and take this team to a different level of offense.

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