MWC notes: Tournament has plenty of familiarity

The first round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament in Las Vegas looks, for the most part, like a series of reruns. Almost all of the matchups are rematches of games played last Saturday.

No. 2 Utah meets No. 7 TCU; the Utes defeated the Horned Frogs at the Huntsman Center. No. 3 New Mexico goes up against No. 6 Wyoming; the Lobos beat the Cowboys in Laramie — and No. 4 San Diego State faces No. 5 UNLV; the Aztecs downed the Rebels in San Diego.

The lone exception is the play-in game, featuring No. 9 Air Force and No. 8 Colorado State — but if the Falcons win, they'll have a rematch with BYU. The Cougars held off AFA last Saturday in Provo, 54-49.

The difference with these types of reruns is nobody really knows what will happen.

"The quirk in our conference tournament this year is it looks like everybody's going to play who they played in their last game," said San Diego State coach Steve Fisher, whose team swept the season series against UNLV and was the only team to beat the Rebels at the Thomas & Mack Center. "Everybody's going to have a hard matchup. To beat anybody three times in a row is hard to do. To beat them on the home floor twice is even more difficult. We'll see what happens. We hope we play well."

New Mexico's Steve Alford, who earned the league's coach of the year honors on Monday, said the tournament's first round offers plenty of intrigue.

"It's one of those ironic things that's happened through the entire league with everybody playing each other again," he said. "We just got through playing (Wyoming). They'll be fresh on our minds, and we'll be fresh on their minds. You try to make the appropriate adjustments to help your team win."

WIN FOR THE WINLESS?: A year ago, Colorado State lost all 16 regular-season MWC games before beating Wyoming in the play-in game.

This season, Air Force enters the MWC Tournament with an inglorious 0-16 record. As fate would have it, the Falcons face the Rams in Wednesday's play-in game.

Air Force threw a major scare into BYU last Saturday at the Marriott Center, and it has played well the past month.