Log Jams & Separations

ANTIOCH, Ca--One weekend into the second half of conference play and some definition is now visible in those lumps of bread dough called the conference standings.
All of the western conferences remain competitive, but four of them are beginning to shape up into two and three teams races.

The Mountain West is in a furious three way battle between UNLV, New Mexico, and BYU knotted at 7-2, all high quality teams.  And, all likely to Dance.  The MWC is still the best conference West of the Rockies.  Pacific and UCSB have separated themselves from the rest of the pack in the Big West with 8-2 and 8-3 marks respectively.  Pacific's only two conference losses have been handed to them by the Gauchos.  The log jam is for third place with four teams sitting at 5-5.

St. Marys (8-1, 21-3) and Gonzaga (7-1, 19-4) are distancing themselves from the also rans in the WCC.  Gonzaga throttled third place Portland, while St. Mary's had two almost routine wins, lead by Omar Samhan's double/doubles.  Utah State has climbed to the top of the WAC with an 8-2, 18-6 record.  The easily defeated Nevada this weekend to effectively knock the Wolfpack out of the regular season race.  Standing in a two way tie for second are New Mexico State and LaTech, both with 7-2 conference marks.

The Pac-10 has a huge log jam for second place.  Five teams (USC, Arizona, UCLA, Washington, and Arizona State) are tied with 6-5 records.  California rides on top at 7-4.  Weber State is 9-2 in theBig Sky, followed closely by Northern Colorado at 8-3.
But right behind them are Montana State and Montana.

With all of that said, here is my latest edition of the West of the Rocky Mountains Top Ten:

  1.   BYU (22-3, 7-2)
  2.   UNLV (19-4, 7-2)
  3.   New Mexico (21-3, 7-2)
  4.   Gonzaga (19-4, 7-1)
  5.   St. Mary's (21-3, 8-1)
  6.   Utah State (18-6, 8-2)
  7.   Weber State (15-8, 9-2)
  8.   Louisiana Tech (19-4, 7-2)
  9.   California (15-8, 7-4)
 10.  tie:  Pacific (15-7, 8-2)
              UCSB (13-8, 8-3)

That's "30."