NBA draft a bad sign for MWC hoops

If 2005 was the best of times for the Mountain West Conference's national image in men's basketball, well, 2009 just might be the worst of times.

After all, the MWC didn't have one single, solitary player selected in Thursday night's annual NBA Draft. In all, 60 players' names were called — and none of them played their collegiate careers at a Mountain West school.

That's a far cry from four years ago, when Utah's Andrew Bogut was a consensus first team All-American and earned a host of national Player of the Year honors. The Milwaukee Bucks subsequently took the 7-foot center as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 draft.

It sure seemed like Bogut's fellow Australian, Luke Nevill, might at least get a second-round sniff in this year's draft.

After all, Nevill was the MWC's Player of the Year in 2009, when he averaged around 17 points, 9 rebounds and 3 blocks a game. And, let's face it, just how many skilled 7-foot-2 centers are there out there?

Instead, it was not a g'day, mate.

Nope, not at all, as Nevill and the rest of his Mountain West compadres — talented guys like BYU's Lee Cummard and New Mexico's Tony Danridge — were left out in the cold on draft day.

Keep in mind that, if Nevill is the best player that the Mountain West has to offer this year, and he can't even spark enough interest from NBA scouts to warrant as much as a second-round selection, then what does that have to say for the overall strength and national profile of MWC men's basketball as a whole?

No, it's not a good sign. Not very good at all.

Perhaps the fact that Utah received a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, only to suffer a first-round spanking at the hands of an unheralded Arizona squad, served to cast a shadow of doubt on the conference's quality. Perhaps the pro scouts felt that Nevill's impressive numbers were skewered by playing against inferior MWC opponents.

And maybe it was Bogut himself — an all-everything collegiate performer four years ago who has had nothing more than a mediocre NBA career thus far with the Bucks — who made some pro scouts think twice about going to the MWC well again for another 7-footer from Australia.

Reports say that Nevill was ranked as the eighth-best center in this year's draft. Sure, that sounds pretty good, until you consider that only three centers — including the Utah Jazz's second-round pick, 6-10 Goran Suton of Michigan State — were selected at all this time around.