San José State Can't Catch a Break: One Year Later
Revisiting the Spartans as they try again to win their first Mountain West Tournament game in their ninth attempt
On March 8, 2022, the day before 11-seed San José State faced 6-seed Fresno State in the Mountain West Tournament, I wrote about the Spartans’ rather brutal decade since joining the Mountain West Conference in 2013.
San José State, 0-7 all-time in Mountain West Tournament games at the time of publication, became 0-8 the next day as they took Fresno State to overtime but couldn’t seal the deal, falling 69-67.
Today, as the Spartans begin Mountain West Tournament play again, I’d like to revisit that piece. Below, I’ve kept the crux of the piece but edited and updated it for 2023. Enjoy!
“We are not joining this conference simply to compete. We are joining to win, and to build upon our current record of success reflecting San José State’s role as a leader in the classroom, in research and in athletics.”
These were the words of Mohammad Qayoumi, then the president of San José State University, as he announced the school had accepted an invitation to join the Mountain West Conference (MWC) beginning on July 1, 2013.
But aside from one football title in the farcical 2020 season1 — which itself was sandwiched between two 5-7 seasons — the Spartans haven’t done much winning and, unfortunately, have often struggled simply to compete.
In football, they’ve played to a 33-47 record in MWC play, even including the 7-0 season in 2020. Life’s been even less forgiving in men’s basketball, where they’ve gone 31-147 across their ten seasons of MWC play, finishing last in the league in six of those years.2 It’s not just demoralizing; it’s the type of performance that makes you wonder why they were invited to the conference in the first place.
It’s enticing to just pull up their list of football seasons on Wikipedia and note that they went 11-2 in 2012, and so that must be why the Mountain West came calling, but no; they officially announced their move from the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in May 2012, before that season began, so that’s just a coincidence. Before then, they hadn’t played a winning football conference slate since 2006.
The true answer is probably some combination of media market and familiarity with the rest of the league. To the first point, the Bay Area is the sixth largest media market in the United States and by far the largest covered by the Mountain West.3 To the second, San José State was a member of the spectacular failure that was the late ‘90s WAC superconference. Eight members from that conference split off to form the MWC in 1999 and the MWC has since pulled almost exclusively from the WAC in searching for replacement and expansion members during conference realignment.4 The most likely explanation is that Mountain West leadership saw a WAC member in the Bay Area and got dollar signs in their eyes.
San José State was, of course, elated to receive the invitation. I’m sure they’re not quite as elated at the results they’ve seen in revenue sports, but on the field, this year was far better than most. The Spartans went 5-3 in football league play en route to a 7-4 record that would become 7-5 after a loss to Eastern Michigan in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. Tragically, that uneven, 11-game regular season schedule came as the result of the death of freshman running back Camdan McWright, struck and killed by a school bus while riding a scooter near campus on October 21, the day before the Spartans' scheduled game at New Mexico State.
San José State also finished with a winning conference record in men’s basketball: their first since 1994, when they were still in the Big West. Their 10-8 record this season was good for fifth in the league. Even better, they finally beat Colorado State not just once, but twice! Prior to this season, they’d lost all 17 matchups against Colorado State since they joined the league and were 0-23 against the Rams all-time. And hey, if they can break two depressing streaks this year, why not try for a third?
San José State has not won a conference tournament game since 2011. They’ve only played in the Mountain West since the 2014 season, meaning they have yet to win a Mountain West Conference Tournament game. The MWC invites every team in the league to their tournament, so — except for 2015, when San José State was academically ineligible — the Spartans have played in the conference tournament every year and lost their first game every year.5 Per my own research, their 0-8 record in conference tournament games since joining the Mountain West is matched in futility only by Maine, a program that hasn’t won a conference tournament game since 2005 and is historically among the very worst in Division I. Almost every other school that has failed to win a conference tournament game in this timeframe is either new to D1 or a member of the Ivy League.6
There’s nothing fun about this. Unlike many schools so mired in basketball misfortune, San José State is among the largest universities in the country, with over 35,000 students as of Fall 2022 and an alumni base of over 275,000. That’s a pretty huge fanbase suffering through this dry spell. As on any team, the players give their all, night in and night out; senior forward Omari Moore has stuck with the Spartans since the 2020 season. And the Spartans are coached by second-year journeyman and general stand-up guy Tim Miles, who deserves success more than just about any coach in the game.
The problem this year is that the Spartans might have been too good. They’re the 5-seed in this year’s MWC Tournament, which was good enough to give them a bye to the quarterfinals, where they’ll face 4-seed Nevada at 5:30pm EST on CBS Sports Network. Had they finished just one spot lower, they would have been the 6-seed and faced 11-seed Wyoming, the worst team in the league, in the first round. They can blame New Mexico, the last team in all of Division I to lose a game this season, for completely collapsing in February and falling behind them in the standings. The Lobos are led by former Minnesota head coach Richard Pitino, so the Cornhusker in Tim Miles should be used to it.
KenPom gives San José State just a 34% chance of winning this afternoon; Bart Torvik gives them a 35% chance. Nevada is only favored by five points in Vegas, but if this game is anything like the two these teams have already played this season, Nevada will win in a blowout. The Wolf Pack clobbered them 67-40 in San José on January 7 and followed that up with a 66-51 win in Reno on February 21.
San José State probably won’t end the streak this year despite being an obviously better team than over half the league. But hell if I won’t be pulling for ‘em for 40 minutes and beyond.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, San José State did not play a non-conference schedule and the Mountain West played a shortened conference slate, made even shorter by the fact most teams had at least one game cancelled due to pandemic complications. The Spartans went 6-0 and defeated Boise State in the championship game to claim the title before getting slaughtered by Ball State in the Arizona Bowl to finish the year 7-1. No fans were permitted to attend any of their eight games.
Out of 11 teams in the conference, San José State has also finished ninth in 2017, tenth in 2020, and ninth in 2021.
The next largest is Denver (16th), which includes Fort Collins: home of Colorado State.
Discounting Colorado College, an associate member for women’s soccer only, every school who has ever played in the MWC had played in the WAC beforehand. The only school who did not come directly from the WAC was TCU, who was a member of the late ‘90s superconference, but spent a few interim years in Conference USA before joining the MWC from 2005 to 2012.
Yes, even in 2020; the Mountain West was one of the few conferences to finish its tournament before the pandemic shut everything down.
The Ivy League did not hold a conference tournament until 2017 and did not play either the 2020 or 2021 tournaments due to COVID-19. They have played just four conference tournaments, and in each, they have invited only the top four teams in their eight-team league.
Quadruple Overtime, SJSU up by 2, they're free from a foul with 0.2 left and just chuck it up as you see in celebration.
It goes in their own basket. SJSU loses, in 5 overtimes. (Quintuple overtime? That's the word, right)