All you need to know about the Mountain West, and then some
*With the Mountain West as we know it ending, I thought it would be fun to go back and highlight the best players, games, and teams over the past 13 years. Today is for the top 10 football players The Mountain West is changing, with new teams joining while others leave. The current setup has […]
ALBUQUERQUE – The Final Four is set. The Lobos are off to Indianapolis, the watch parties are being planned and the anticipation is building rapidly in the 505. Is the University of New Mexico really about to do the unthinkable? Go where no Lobos team has gone before and win their first-ever national championship? No, […]
Welcome back everyone to the Hike’s Peak podcast, thank you for coming back to the mountain! The offseason has already kicked into high gear, with Utah State moving quickly to hire their next head coach in Ben Jacobson from Northern Iowa. Not exactly a household name, but I’ll walk you through his resume and tell […]
Week 8 of the 2026 season saw multiple surprising upsets across the college softball world, and that certainly carried over into the Mountain West Conference, with projected preseason contenders Nevada, San Diego State, Fresno State, and Boise State each being upset by inferior teams, the latter three losing their respective series to underdog competition. With […]
It was a hectic week for Mountain West teams in postseason play, with coaches on the move and teams looking to extend their seasons. After a first round win over Villanova, Utah State had a second round game against top-seeded Arizona. Meanwhile, UNLV, Nevada, and New Mexico all looked to move past the round of […]
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Ben Jacobson Hired as Utah State Head Men’s Basketball Coach In a surprising twist after all the Mark Madsen rumors, Utah State hired Ben Jacobson to take over the vacancy Jerrod Calhoun left behind. A shocker frankly, Jacobson was at Northern Iowa for 20 years and appeared to be a lifer for the Panthers. It’s […]
Utah State has its guy. And no, it is not California head coach Mark Madsen despite the feverish rumors spreading across X last night. Ben Jacobson, 55, had spent 25 years in Cedar Falls as a part of the Northern Iowa program – five as an assistant before being handed the keys in 2006. He […]
It’s another week of the Recruiting Roundup. One recruiting topic that has been on my mind is how North Dakota State is preparing to make the jump from FCS to FBS football and the number of scholarship players they will have on their roster for the 2026 season. FCS football teams are allowed to award […]
It was yet another crazy week in Mountain West baseball. The top-seeded Falcons got off to a strong start, then fell apart in Texas. SDSU and Nevada took care of business on the road, pushing the notion that home turf might not matter as much as it does in a sport like men’s basketball. And […]
It’s Monday, and March Madness is still going strong, plus New Mexico is still in the NIT. Also, many Mountain West teams are going through spring practices. Check out our original coverage and what we can find from the World Wide Web below. Initial 2026 SP+ Rankings Bill Connelly debuts his initial projections for next […]
All Mountain West basketball teams completed their seasons a few weeks ago, and March Madness will crown a new champion next week, meaning we are officially in the spring phase of our content calendar. I’m refraining from referring to it as the “offseason” because we all know that there is truly no break when it […]
On Friday, the college baseball world was left scratching its head over the Antelopes. Grand Canyon University announced its decision to part ways with baseball head coach Gregg Wallis after three and a half seasons at the helm. “We are grateful to Coach Wallis for his 13 years of service as both an assistant and […]
This post is brought to you by FanDuel, proud partner of SBNation. Aggies get a B for March Madness Utah State won their opening game and then put up a fight against Arizona in the second round. For their efforts, half of the voters believe they deserve a B. A third are giving them an A, […]
Each week, we here at Mountain West Connection will briefly preview every series going on in the conference, detailing how each team is going into the series and a key item to note that we feel will dictate the winner. Afterwards, if there are any non-conference series going on, we will go through each series […]
Spring practices for college football are the oasis between the end of one season and the start of the next. For fifteen quick practices, usually spread out over five or six weeks, fans have their thirsts quenched with small servings of content, while writers are thankful for storylines in an otherwise dry period of the […]
SAP CENTER, San Jose, CA — Every March, the same question quietly lingers around the Mountain West: what separates us from them? Not in effort. Not in coaching. Not even in system execution or money and resources. For the sake and semblance of simplicity, we’ll focus on roster DNA. The west contenders are Arkansas, Arizona, […]
New Mexico returns lots of production next season Oregon State is poised for another big change in the athletic department Utah State has its first portal casualty after Calhoun leaves Boise State kicks off its first spring practice Sire Gaines, Dylan Riley, and Jaden Mickey discuss the first day of practice and their goals for […]
Sitting and feeling the vibe and energy of the Sweet 16 / Elite 8 at SAP Center in San Jose Thursday night; somehow this longtime Mountain West writer felt a bit detached. So detached watching Arizona run away with a powerful 109-88 win over Arkansas that the daydreamer side crept into full imagination mode at […]
San Jose, CA — As the Purdue Boilermakers moved on in a tightrope 79-77 win over Texas, there’s something a little funny, almost poetic, about the fact that the West Regional at the SAP Center feels less like a celebration of West Coast basketball and more like a frequent flyer convention. As the madness rolls […]
With the conclusion of Week 7, the 2026 NCAA Softball regular season has officially reached its halfway point. The Mountain West Conference is just as chaotic now as it has been for most of the season, with all but two of the conference’s 10 teams being within two games of each other. Let’s take a […]
One thing that gets discussed on social media and in person during every college basketball season in the Mountain West is the abysmal officiating situation that plagues the league. Time and time again, the referees that oversee the conference games take a bit of negative spotlight due to their antics, which is an understandable consequence […]
Utah State says so long to another successful short-timer. Jerrod Calhoun, we hardly knew ya Doug Robinson of the Desert News expresses the same frustrations of many Utah State fans everywhere after once again their head basketball coach has elected to take another job, this time watching Jerrod Calhoun take the Cincinnati job. Jeff Choate […]
Las Vegas, Nevada, is a familiar venue for the Grand Canyon University men’s basketball team, but in 2026, Sin City felt more like uncharted territory. The final buzzer sounded on the Antelopes season on March 12, falling to Nevada in the Mountain West Tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center, just a 12-minute drive east […]
This era of the Mountain West won’t officially be over for another three months and change, but practically, it ended at the conclusion of the Mountain West tournament a week and a half ago. And the general consensus is that this version of the MW is going out for a whimper. With both sides of […]