The emergence of Donovan Dent and some real rim protection has led to the Lobos' defense taking a huge leap forward in Mashburn's absence. The Lobos have relied on Mashburn and Jaelen House to run this offense, and they're two high-usage, ball-dominant guards. Mashburn is expected to return for the start of the conference play, and it'll be interesting to see how Richard Pitino makes this backcourt work. New Mexico played most of the non-conference slate without Jamal Mashburn Jr., who hasn't appeared since a Nov. Tier 1 is made up of the favorites (Colorado State, San Diego State, New Mexico), Tier 2 is the bubble squads (Utah State, Nevada, Boise State, UNLV) and Tier 3 is the long shots (Fresno State, Wyoming, San Jose State and Air Force). The betting markets view this conference in three tiers as conference play is almost set to get underway.

There's a handful of impressive wins too, like Colorado State's win against Creighton, Nevada's win at Washington and SDSU's demolition of Saint Mary's. Not one of them took a terrible loss that would be considered Q3 or Q4 come tournament time. Most importantly, for the MWC as a league, the resumes produced in the non-conference by the league's top six teams have been strong. The Aztecs are 9-2, but they've won four games (UC Irvine, UC San Diego, Washington and California) on the final possession or in overtime. San Diego State began the season as a +140 favorite to win the league, but Brian Dutcher's squad has had some growing pains in the non-conference.

The conference has six teams in the top 75 of the KenPom Adjusted Efficiency metrics, just one fewer than the neighboring Pac-12. Now that non-conference play has neared its conclusion, the 2023-24 version of the Mountain West looks as deep in the middle tier as ever. San Diego State won the league title and made it all the way to the National Championship, but the other three tournament teams (Utah State Boise State, Nevada) all lost comfortably in the opening round. The Mountain West Conference was a four-bid league in each of the last two seasons, but most would say that the conference as a whole was down year-over-year in 2022-23.

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