FanHouse Utah

Utah is clearly the class of the Mountain West right now after avenging an early loss to UNLV. Now the question becomes is Utah the best team in the West right now?

The Pac-10 folks with Washington, Arizona State and UCLA might beg to differ. All three teams are ranked in the Top 25, and Cal holds an early season win over Utah. (And before you even mention Gonzaga, realized that Utah owns a recent win over the Bulldogs.)

So be honest, if you were filling out our tournament bracket today, would you pick any of those three to beat the Utes?

Don't answer too quickly, and take some time to consider just how well the Utes are playing right now in one of the most underrated conferences in college basketball. Though some of the less educated college basketball fans haven't quite caught on to the Mountain West just yet.

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Were it not for UCLA, UNLV would be a dead lock for 2009's most befuddling team award. The Rebels are an engima, a two-faced team more befitting of a Tommy Lee Jones' character instead of a Mountain West leader.

Let's recap UNLV's season. Losses at Colorado State, TCU and Wyoming. But a season sweep of BYU. The Rebels won at the Marriott Center -- arguably one of the toughest places to play in the nation. But couldn't win in Fort Collins against one of the worst teams in the Mountain West.

But when the NCAA selection committee looks at bubble teams, UNLV has a win at Louisville, at BYU and home wins over Utah, BYU and Arizona. The Rebels might have saved their tournament lives Saturday night.

The Mountain West conference is currently a four-bid conference. Heady times for the conference that was robbed by the BCS. But if those teams want to stay in the tournament, there are a couple of rules that need to be followed. Or else the NIT awaits.

The first rule is just basic common sense. There can be no bad loses. None. Brigham Young hammered Colorado State on Wednesday night, while UNLV knocked off Texas Christian on Tuesday night. That is big. BYU doesn't lose at home, but they can pout on the road some times. The Rebels lost at Colorado State this season, so there are no rules too small to follow. Especially since Joe Lundardi has BYU and UNLV projected as two of the last teams in the tournament.

And then there is the second rule. Protect your home-court at all costs.

No Utah fan could chant "over-rated" when the UCLA Bruins took the field at the Rose Bowl on Saturday. That is because the lowly UCLA Bruins didn't receive one vote in the preseason AP poll.

But their relative anonymity did not destroy the Bruins' confidence and may have inspired these new-look Sons of Westwood to a 31-10 win over the Utes. "Yay. We're not as bad as everyone thinks," could have been the collective cheer in the Arroyo Seco.

Perhaps the best news of all for UCLA was that 23 year old quarterback Ben Olson whose last meaningful snap in a football game came when George Bush's approval ratings were over 80 percent, is "all that," and a bag of chips. The hype didn't lie in this case.