Mountain West tournament bracket set with plenty of storylines

If the Mountain West men’s basketball tournament is anything like the regular-season race, hold on to your high tops.

What was one of the closest finishes in league history now moves to the Thomas & Mack Center. The conference tournament begins Wednesday.

The bracket wasn’t set until the final game concluded Saturday, when UNR ended UNLV’s five-game win streak with a 75-65 victory in Reno.

UNLV is seeded fourth and faces No. 5 San Diego State in a quarterfinal matchup Thursday at 2:30 p.m. The teams won’t have to familiarize themselves with each other, having just met Tuesday.

The Rebels won 62-58 at home.

“You always want to be in those afternoon games,” San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher said. “It’s a benefit. Both teams will be familiar with game plans. There may be some tweaks with things you had success with and they had success with. We’ll scheme different. They’ll scheme different.

“The prep is different when you’re not playing someone in the play-in game. Each of us know who we’re playing. We just played.”

Three games separated the top five teams in the conference standings.

“It was crazy,” Dutcher said. “When is the last time we had the top seven teams in the league with winning records?”

Utah State is one key story to watch.

The top-seeded Aggies were picked ninth in a preseason media poll and returned zero points from an NCAA Tournament team last year. They still won the regular-season title outright under first-year coach Danny Sprinkle.

Utah State is led by transfers Great Osobor and Darius Brown, who both followed Sprinkle from Montana State to Logan.

The Aggies open quarterfinal play against the winner of Wednesday’s play-in game between Wyoming and Fresno State.

The winner of UNLV-San Diego State would face the winner of Utah State’s game in one semifinal at 6:30 p.m. Friday.

It will also be interesting to see how the bracket unfolds in terms of potential NCAA Tournament berths.

Most bracketology predictions have had six Mountain West teams making the field for some time now.

UNLV, with a NET ranking of 75 and a KenPom rating of 72, would have to win the conference tournament to secure a trip to the NCAAs.

The Rebels enter having won 10 of their last 12 games.

Utah State and UNR are the hottest teams coming in. The Aggies have won five straight and the second-seeded Wolf Pack seven in a row.

Contact Ed Graney at egraney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @edgraney on X.