Where Boise State stands among Mountain West NCAA Tournament bubble teams

The Mountain West’s lengthy streak of multiple men’s basketball NCAA Tournament bids is in jeopardy this season.

As of Tuesday morning, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has just one MWC team safely inside his field of 68.

Lunardi awarded the MWC-leading Aggies (23-4, 13-3) a No. 7 seed in his latest NCAA Tournament projection. Utah State, which travels to San Diego State (18-8, 12-4) on Wednesday, had an eight-game winning streak snapped last weekend at Nevada (18-9, 10-6).

New Mexico (21-6, 12-4) was the final team included in Lunardi’s field of 68, joining Missouri, Santa Clara and TCU among his last four in. The Aztecs were listed in the first four out alongside Ohio State, USC and California.

The Lobos have a massive road game at 9 p.m. Mountain time on Tuesday night against Nevada. The Wolf Pack is favored by 1.5 points at Lawlor Events Center.

The SEC earned 11 bids in Lunardi’s latest projection, followed by the Big Ten (nine), ACC (eight), Big 12 (eight), Big East (three), West Coast Conference (three) and MWC (two).

The MWC has received at least two NCAA Tournament bids every year since 2017.

Three MWC teams are on the fringes of the bubble: Boise State (16-11, 8-8), Grand Canyon (17-10, 10-6) and Nevada (18-9, 10-6).

The Broncos lead the bunch in KenPom (No. 60 Boise State, No. 61 GCU, No. 67 Nevada) and NET Ranking (No. 62 Boise State, No. 66 Nevada, No. 75 GCU) but are two games back in the conference standings.

Boise State split its regular-season series with the Wolf Pack and is 0-2 against the Lopes with two blowout losses.

“This team needs to continue to grow and keep getting better at the things that can make us a better team down the stretch,” Broncos head coach Leon Rice said. “And then really figure out ‘OK, this is what we’re doing really well and this is what makes a difference in a lot of games for us,’ and become extremely good at that stuff.”

If the Broncos are going to make a late-season surge, it must occur on the defensive end.

“You just have to be able to hang your hat on your defense,” Rice said. “You see it all over the country. Offenses come and go … and you’re seeing even more swings throughout games because offensive players are better than they used to be, and there are a bunch of them that can really get cooking.

“That being said, you’ve got to be able to hang your hat on some consistency on your defense. We’ve had moments of really good defense with this team, then our offense got better and our defense slid a little bit. If we can get our defense up to a standard where every night we can hang our hat on that, then you’re going to be pretty darn good down the stretch.”

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