Mountain West men’s basketball rosters are more or less finalized for most schools after a busy offseason saw the league hire three news coaches with several rosters being heavily flipped due to the impact of the transfer portal. Previously, we have offered our early-portal power rankings; conference-wide transfer portal tracker; and top-20 transfers entering the MW. Today, we give you 11 offseason observations about the league entering the 2025-26 campaign.
* Only one of the 15 All-MW first-, second- or third-team honorees from last season will return to their school, which is crazy. That one player is Utah State’s Mason Falslev, a 2024-25 second-teamer. SDSU’s Miles Byrd also could return, although he had a good NBA draft combine and could remain in the draft. There were seven players on the all-conference team with remaining eligibility, so six are off to greener pastures. The year prior, six of eight All-MW first-, second- or third-team players with remaining eligibility returned to their MW school, the only exceptions being Great Osobor (Utah State to Washington) and JT Toppin (New Mexico to Texas Tech). High-end retention this year was nowhere near as strong.
* The biggest surprise among MW players staying in the conference came from freshman of the year Magoon Gwath, who entered the portal before quickly withdrawing. After the last two MW freshmen of the year transferred to Texas Tech, the easy joke was Gwath would land with the Red Raiders, too. Kentucky was the popular landing spot for Gwath before he stayed at SDSU, which has a legitimate super team if Byrd returns. Even without him, SDSU will be the team to beat in the MW with six returning rotation players and three high-level transfers. SDSU looks a lot stronger entering this season than it did entering last year when it made its fifth straight NCAA Tournament.
* The MW has three clear NCAA Tournament-caliber rosters in Utah State, SDSU and Boise State. I’d be surprised if any of those three teams doesn’t make the 2026 field. Yes, Boise State loses star Tyson Degenhart, although he always was a team-first guy who didn’t have a huge usage rate (he was 11th in that category in the MW last season). I’m not saying Degenhart will be easy to replace, but the Broncos have five good players returning and added a starter from UCLA (Dylan Andrews) and Georgetown (Drew Fielder) in position of needs. These three teams are a clear cut above everybody else in the MW.
* Colorado State and New Mexico will be the most interesting teams to watch in 2025-26. Both are coming off second-round showings in the NCAA Tournament but are led by first-year head coaches with Ali Farokhmanesh in Fort Collins and Eric Olen in Albuquerque. The Lobos return zero points from last season but have an intriguing recruiting class under Olen, who is a good Xs and Os coach and should see his team improve as the year progresses. Meanwhile, Farokhmanesh has more proven talent to work with after the return of starter Rashaan Mbemba and two more bigs. He’s landed some good transfers, too, but first-time head coaches in the MW over the last decade haven’t worked out well.
* UNLV has the top transfer class in the MW, per the national rankings, but also lost all but 33 of its 2,285 points from last season. The Rebels also have a first-year head coach in Josh Pastner, who’s always had the ability to land talent. His biggest issue as a coach was maximizing that talent. UNLV has the largest variance of potential results this season because the talent is there but the group has minimal time to gel and is run by a first-year head coach trying to establish his culture. If UNLV finished third in the MW, I wouldn’t be shocked. If it finished eighth in the MW, I wouldn’t be shocked.
* Nevada has culled the MW’s most eclectic transfer class with an NAIA star, JuCo star and four Division I transfers, of which, only Fresno State import Elijah Price was drawing heavy large-school interest. The Wolf Pack returns just one high-minute rotation player in Tyler Rolison, so this is almost a complete roster reset. But Steve Alford’s 34-year career is littered with major rebounds. The year after going 16-16 at Missouri State, his team made the Sweet 16. The year after going 14-16 at Iowa, his team won a Big Ten title and reached the NCAA Tournament. The year after going 15-17 at UCLA, his team reached the Sweet 16. And the year after going 13-18 at Nevada, his team reached the NCAA Tournament. Does Alford have another bad-season bounce in store after last year’s disappointing 17-16 campaign?
* San Jose State did another awesome job of developing unproven talent for other programs with Robert Vaihola (Minnesota), Latrell Davis (San Diego State) and Will McClendon (North Texas) transferring out this offseason. The Spartans have lost their top returning scorer to transfer in seven of the last nine years (and the year before that, it kicked its top returning scorer off the team). San Jose State added one of the MW’s top transfers this offseason in Colby Garland, from Longwood. I wonder where he’ll be playing in 2026-27 after leading the Spartans in scoring this upcoming season.
* Speaking of losing your top returning player, Air Force is making a habit out of that in recent seasons and lost Luke Kearney (Utah State) and Will Cooper (Nebraska) this offseason, although it got a win in retaining Kyle Marshall, who entered the portal before returning to school. Given the Falcons are land-locked in terms of adding transfers, I don’t know how this program wins in the future. Joe Scott has been Air Force’s coach for nine seasons over two tenures with one winning record, that being the 2023-04 season in which the Falcons won the MW regular-season title and played in the NCAA Tournament. No program should be looking more forward to the MW being watered down post-2026 than Air Force.
* Fresno State lost 12 players to the transfer portal and has added three. That’s not an ideal ratio. The Bulldogs haven’t been great in men’s basketball but did win at least 20 games six times from 2013-14 to 2021-22, a nine-season stretch. It’s sad how quickly Fresno State has bottomed out. It’s reminiscent of Nevada football’s last three-season stretch, a once solid program quickly falling into disrepair. I don’t see the Bulldogs getting out of that disrepair anytime soon. It’s going to take a coaching change, and the new Pac-12 that Fresno State is about to step into post-2026 is loaded with schools serious about basketball (Gonzaga, San Diego State, Boise State, Utah State, Colorado State), which the Bulldogs clearly are not.
* I guess we should say something about Wyoming since we hit on every other team in the conference. I like coach Sundance Wicks. I don’t think he has a top-half MW roster. Also, the Wyoming’s Rib & Chop House is nice.
* Finally, let’s enjoy this last season of MW basketball as we know it. I know it’s annoying MW teams regularly lose their top players via the transfer portal every season. But the MW is going to be really good at basketball again in 2025-26. The MW has put at least four teams in the NCAA Tournament four straight seasons. Next year should be five. These programs and coaches find a way to get it done year in and year out. That will change in 2026-27 after the Pac-12/MW split with most of the top basketball programs in that transaction heading to the Pac-12, making this one last hurrah for the MW. It should be an enjoyable ride.
Sports columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. Contact him at crmurray@sbgtv.com or follow him on Twitter @ByChrisMurray.