Late last season, the Mountain West Conference rose up to have the top average RPI in the nation. Andy Glockner of Sports Illustrated had a brilliant article explaining why this happened. Essentially the RPI favors power conferences where the home teams dominate, and the MWC teams were the best in the nation at winning at home last year. (For those that care about the math behind this, skip to the end of this post.)

Second, the RPI of MWC teams was boosted by Wyoming. A good team in November and December, but when Luke Martinez was kicked off the team for an off-court incident, Wyoming simply couldn’t score. And the RPI wasn’t smart enough realize that Wyoming was a bad team in January and February.

Finally, the other big factor in the MWC’s great RPI was that the bottom of the league was remarkably strong. Traditional power Nevada was the league’s bottom-feeder and even Nevada wasn’t a terrible team last season. The Wolfpack won at Washington in December.

All in all, it was a perfect storm that made the MWC seem like a dominant league, at least in the RPI’s eyes. The margin-of-victory systems thought the league was good too, but not nearly as dominant as what the RPI thought. And as is usually the case, the margin-of-victory metrics had the better forecast. In the NCAA tournament, MWC champion New Mexico lost in the first round to Harvard, and the rest of the league struggled as well.

Unfortunately for fans of the MWC, there is no reason to expect any of those factors to repeat this year. Home teams probably won’t win at a disproportionate rate. Wyoming won’t be dominant and then bad. And the bottom of the league will be bad again. (With San Jose St. coming aboard and Air Force rebuilding behind a bunch of 2-star recruits, a drop-off at the bottom of the league is almost unavoidable). Five teams might be in the conversation for the NCAA tournament, but a year after dominating the regular season, it wouldn’t be out of the question for the league to get only two bids.

Here is my lineup-based prediction model's projections for the league in 2013-14:

For column heading definitions, click here.

New Mexico: New Mexico returns four starters (Alex Kirk, Cameron Bairstow, Kendall Williams, and Hugh Greenwood) from last year’s conference winning squad. And they added Cullen Neal who has only recently risen up into ESPNU Top 100. That starting lineup should be competitive with any team in the country. But the team has little proven depth. (Will Kansas transfer Merv Lindsay contribute?) And since this is Craig Neal’s first head coaching job, there are questions of whether he can lead a team to a league title in his first year. The MWC spends as much on coaching as the traditional power leagues, and opposing coaches will heavily scout the Lobos. Will Neal be ready?

Boise St.: I’ve seen a lot of people with Boise St. in their Top 25 and I understand the logic. This was a good team last year and they bring back 91% of their minutes from last season. But my model has them a little bit lower because there are still some real question marks. In particular, Boise St.’s primary offense was a 4-guard lineup last year. But a number of the guards they played simply weren’t very good. Mikey Thompson, Igor Hadziomerovic, and Joe Hanstad were big drains on the offense because of their turnovers and/or bad shooting. If I could say with confidence those three would be relegated to the bench this season, it would be a no-brainer to put Boise St. in the Top 25. But Boise St. isn’t bringing in any can’t miss prospects to ensure that this happens.

Realistically the team will probably hope to get more out of some of its forwards. JUCO transfer James Webb, red-shirt freshman Edmund Dukulis, incoming freshman Nick Duncan, and seldom-used Darrious Hamilton or Vukasin Vujovic will probably get a chance to play more post minutes next year. If they can earn time, the taller lineup might help improve the defense some. But none of them have particularly high expectations either.

Leon Rice is doing a fantastic job, and the expectation for this team should absolutely be the NCAA tournament. But on paper, there are still too many lineup questions to view Boise St. as a clear Top 25 team.

Utah St.: Most people probably won’t have Utah St. this high because of how they ended their tenure in the WAC conference. To finish  11-7 in that league which really only had three good teams was pretty disappointing. But that completely overlooks what happened last year. In mid-January, Utah St. lost its too most efficient players in Preston Medlin and Kyisean Reed. And both were relatively high usage players too, they weren’t just role players. Those type of injuries are devastating at that point in the season and Utah St. could never really recover in conference play.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like Reed will be back. He went through senior day festivities and I haven’t heard any news that he will apply for an extra hardship year. But the return of Medlin from injury should instantly upgrade the offense.

And Utah St. is once again very mature. The team can put together an 8-man lineup with one sophomore, two juniors, and five seniors. The fact that the team doesn’t need to break in a lot of freshmen should help the offense click. Add to that the fact that Stew Morrill has been one of the most under-rated offensive coaches in the nation, and Utah St. will be good again. They might not win the MWC this year, but they will absolutely be close to the top.

UNLV: Click here for a more detailed preview of UNLV.

San Diego St.: JJ O’Brien and Xavier Thames are solid players. And I can write down a seven or eight player rotation for San Diego St. that sounds reasonably intimidating on paper.  But San Diego St. loses its two most important players in Chase Tapley and Jamaal Franklin. Both took a high volume of shots, played a ton of minutes, and were super efficient. (Departing senior DeShawn Stephens rarely shot, but he was very efficient too.) Losing players like that just isn’t a recipe for a better season. And San Diego St. had only the 36th best margin-of-victory last year. 

The recent addition of Tulane graduate transfer Josh Davis helps a lot. Davis was an unbelievably dominant forward without much help around him. And incoming freshman Dakarai Allen also has high expectations. But expecting those two to do better than Tapley and Franklin seems like a little bit of a stretch.

To truly make the NCAA tournament, San Diego St. is going to need more out of Winston Shepherd, Dwayne Polee, and James Johnson. All three were Top 100 recruits out of high school, but none of them has posted an ORtg above 100 yet. (And Johnson played a rather distressing four minutes per game last year.) Unless a couple of those players break out rather unexpectedly, San Diego St. will have a hard time making a fifth straight NCAA tournament.

Wyoming and Fresno St: The best thing you can say about Wyoming and Fresno St. is that they will probably be competitive defensively. Wyoming head coach Larry Shyatt has produced Top 100 defenses in back-to-back years. After how poorly Henry Schroyer’s defenses did over the previous four years, Shyatt at least has his team working hard. Similarly Rodney Terry orchestrated a remarkable defensive turnaround this least season. Fresno St.’s adjusted defense fell from 101.3 to 93.2.

Offensively, it is harder to be optimistic, but here are a couple of points on the two teams. In Wyoming’s case freshman Josh Adams was dreadful. Larry Shyatt clearly thought he was valuable giving him major minutes throughout the season, but Adams was a terrible shooter. Adams will be better as a sophomore, but he was only a 2-star player, and it isn’t clear that he has a very high ceiling. If Wyoming would limit Adams shot selection, the offense could take more of a bump.

In Fresno St.’s case, prized recruit Robert Upshaw was also awful, but he was hampered by injuries all year. If he is fully healthy from the start of the year, he could improve significantly. And the addition of elite transfer recruit Cezar Guerrero should also help. But with few above average efficiency players returning, Fresno St.’s offense will still likely be below average.

Nevada: David Carter has proven to be a poor defensive coach. And after making the tournament four years in a row, Nevada now hasn’t been to the tournament in six years. I feel bad for Deonte Burton (and to a lesser extent Jerry Evans). Burton is a fabulous PG, but he just doesn’t have a lot of quality offensive players to feed the ball to. And with the team exerting no effort on defense, Nevada won’t score enough points to win consistently.

Colorado St.: Colorado St. is poised for a hard fall this year. It isn’t just that Colorado St. loses 5 starters. Returning only 27% of the team’s minutes is bad enough. But the team also loses all its high volume shooters. The returning players like Daniel Bejarano and Gerson Santo were efficient last year, but they also deferred a lot in last year’s offense. The model is skeptical they can maintain their efficiency when asked to shoot more. That is why the model projects Colorado St. to have one of the biggest offensive collapses of any team in the country this off-season. The team also doesn’t add any can’t miss recruits. The team adds two JUCO transfers, which should help, and Dwight Smith will be back from an injury. But with all that roster attrition, the best case scenario is probably a season like Vanderbilt had last year.

Air Force: Dave Pilipovich did a fantastic job in his first season with the team, but Air Force is a very hard place to win. To return just one-third of the team’s minutes from last year and try to create a winning team with only 2-star recruits is a major undertaking.

San Jose St.: San Jose St. returns only four scholarship players from last year. When you don’t have enough quality upperclassman at San Jose St., the odds of winning are slim to none.

And now the math based reason that the RPI favors conferences where the home team wins. (Again I am just lifting this idea from Andy Glockner.)

Imagine there are just three games, a neutral site non-conference game which the power conference team wins, and then two conference games home and road, which are split. Under the RPI formula, the neutral site win counts as 1 win. But how the W-L split is counted will depend on where the win and loss happen. If the home team wins both, the weight is 0.6, if the road team wins both, the weight is 1.4. So if the home team wins both, the W-L record will be 1.6 and 0.6. If road teams win, the W-L record will be 2.4 and 1.4. The former works out to a 73 percent winning percentage, the later works out to a 63 percent winning percentage. Even though the venues, opponents, and W-L records are the same, the RPI gives higher credit to the league where the home team dominates.

Amusingly, in bad leagues that don’t win many non-conference games, the RPI ratings will be higher if the road teams win more conference games.

INDIANAPOLIS – Around the Miami Heat, Udonis Haslem always has commanded a unique respect, an admiration and gratefulness for the way he embraces sacrificing himself. One after another, Roy Hibbert and David West have took turns punishing the Heat’s frontcourt, and Haslem’s 6-foot-8 frame rendered him mostly overpowered. There needed to be a price paid for the Pacers’ rugged play inside, Haslem believed.

So when Haslem addressed his Heat teammates privately on Sunday, they all absorbed his message: Desperation and a keen remembrance of how Erik Spoelstra showed them the Pacers could be exploited. Across the first two games of these Eastern Conference finals, Indiana suffocated whatever penetration Miami made – suffocated its role players.

Mostly, Hibbert and West had shown clear disrespect toward Haslem’s shooting ability, leaving them free to roam the paint, free to harness LeBron James. Spoelstra and his coaching staff spent considerable time on the off day Saturday pointing out all the open shots that could have went to Haslem and Chris Bosh in Game 2.

And the coach’s plan of exploitation was this: Attack. Draw. Pass.

James and Dwyane Wade did it over and over in Game 3, piling up 11 assists between them, and Haslem delivered 17 points and seven rebounds to punctuate the Heat’s 114-96 win for a 2-1 series lead. Haslem drained six jumpers, and he kept taking hits – kept overcoming them – from Hibbert and West.

“They swallow you up with their size when you get to the basket, so you have to have people who can withstand, people who can shoot the ball,” Haslem told RealGM late Sunday. “It’s something we talked about going into the game. We saw on film that we could take advantage of it. Sometimes, it’s rebounding and defense. [Sunday] it was knocking down shots.

“I was sprinting to my spots. I credit my guys for finding me in my spots and I shot it with confidence.”

Still, Haslem refused to take the majority of credit for his shooting and rebounding. His jumpers were all a byproduct of James and Wade and others, Haslem says, and as far as his rebounding, it was Bosh’s box outs. Nevertheless, the way Haslem deflects praise – the way he matches the physicality of bigger, stronger players – is what endears him among teammates.

“He’s the heartbeat of our team,” James said.

“[Haslem] is all heart,” Wade said.

For the Heat, Game 3 was their sharpest halftime of the playoffs, a 70-point outburst in which James put on a posting up clinic. Paul George went toe to toe, shot for shot with James over two games in Miami, but he had no resistance when LeBron locked into putting his back to the basket and outmuscling the thinner George on Sunday. It was too easy, too often: Dribble up court, pound the ball into James on the left block, and the Pacers were at his mercy.

When the Heat relinquished the homecourt edge in this conference final, Haslem knew they weren’t going to run from the opportunity to regain desperation, but rather run toward it. Wade made progress in critical stretches, and the Heat appear stable with the likelihood his knees are as healthy as they’re going to be, receiving treatment around the clock.

“It’s the first time in a while we truly played like ourselves,” Shane Battier said.

No one more than Haslem. At 32, Haslem understands this postseason – this series, in particular – has tested his body. Hibbert and West will continue trying to impose their physicality on the Heat, a tiring challenge Haslem has embraced.

“I love to compete, love the challenge. I just have to rise to the occasion,” Haslem said in an emptying locker room. “You’ve got size and height with Hibbert, and you’ve got strength and power with West. They both give me different challenges.

“A sense of desperation, we felt like our backs were against the wall. We needed to get this win – by any means necessary.”

All around the Heat, Haslem still has players heeding his words, still intently listening. Spoelstra wisely showed his players footage of situations when Haslem had been left open on the perimeter, left alone by a Pacers defense clogging the paint to guard drives by James.

As he sat in the corner of the locker room, ready to bite into his postgame meal, Haslem nodded knowingly, that he understood those shots would come his way Sunday. Three points combined in his past two games, and still no one around Udonis Haslem was surprised about the barrage of jumpers that happened next.

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Not much has gone right for Dwight Howard since he first demanded to be traded by the Orlando Magic. When this process began, he was widely considered the best big man of his generation. Two years later, the endless speculation about his future has left his reputation in tatters. The scrutiny was his fault, but the devastating back injury that left him a shell of himself was not. Now, with the worst of his recovery behind him, the biggest decision of his career looms ahead. The contract Howard signs this summer will take him through the end of his prime years. This time, he has no one to blame but himself.

When he came to the Los Angeles Lakers, the drama was supposed to end. He would be the next in a long line of Lakers' big men, the centerpiece of a championship organization for the rest of his career. Instead, one by one, the stars he was supposed to play with began going down. Next season, Steve Nash will be 39, Kobe Bryant will be 35 and Pau Gasol will be 33. They’re unlikely to get healthier as they get older. To keep Dwight in town, the Lakers will have to sell him on a vision for 2014 and beyond. As a result, if championships are his goal, the Houston Rockets are the safer bet.

Of the teams lining up to make a run at Dwight this summer, Houston is the one who should scare the Lakers. The Dallas Mavericks and Atlanta Hawks have worked furiously to clear cap space, but in the process, they’ve left their teams without the pieces necessary to lure a star in the first place. The Mavericks had a 41-41 record this season and their best players are all over 34. The Hawks, in theory, could sign Howard and Chris Paul, but all signs point to Paul re-signing with the Clippers. There certainly wouldn’t be Cliff Paul ads all over TV if he was losing in the first round in Atlanta.

If Dwight goes to the Rockets, everything would already be in place. Rather than playing with aging stars at the tail end of their careers, he would be joining one of the youngest and most exciting cores in the NBA. Houston, meanwhile, is becoming a model organization. They have an aggressive front office who can find talent anywhere in the world and a coaching staff willing to think outside the box. On the court, they operate by many of the same principles used by Stan Van Gundy with the Magic, with an offense revolving around spacing the floor and moving the basketball.

Most importantly, they have James Harden. While many doubted whether he was a max player, he established himself as one of the NBA’s best this season. Still only 23, the bearded wonder averaged 26 points, six assists and five rebounds a game on 44/37/85 shooting. Harden is the rare young player who relies more on savvy and feel than pure athleticism; he should be a lock for the All-Star Game for the next decade. An unselfish superstar who enjoys giving up the basketball, Harden would be an ideal pick-and-roll partner for Dwight, getting him 3-5 easy baskets a game rolling to the rim.

The supporting cast is in place too. By the end of their first round series with the Thunder, the Rockets were starting Harden, Chandler Parsons, Patrick Beverley and Carlos Delfino around Omer Asik. Insert Dwight for Asik and that is a serious team. Delfino’s $3 million team option for next season would have to be declined to clear cap space, but Beverley and Parsons are both locked into outrageously team-friendly contracts until at least 2015. The Rockets' core would make Dwight’s life easier, not more difficult. After missing the second round for three straight seasons, there’s something to be said for that.

Only a few tweaks would be necessary to build an elite team. A power forward capable of defending on the low block and stretching the floor out the three-point line would be ideal, but a marginal defensive 4 with an 18-foot jumper would suffice. Then a 3-and-D wing, a backup big man and a second ball-handler to fill out the bench. It’s hard to say exactly how Omer Asik, Jeremy Lin, Greg Smith, Thomas Robinson, Terrence Jones, Donatas Motiejunas and Royce White would fit in with the new plan, but all have enough value on the trade market to be flipped for usable pieces.

And while Houston would be tinkering around the edges, the Lakers would be undergoing a wholesale renovation. How much can you count on Nash, given how fragile he has become? Can Kobe make it back from an Achilles injury at 100 percent? If he does lose a step, will anyone tell him he needs to become a secondary player? Does Mike D’Antoni have the backing of the organization in the event of a power struggle? For that matter, can D’Antoni even build an offense that incorporates Dwight and Pau’s talents? Why am I asking these questions like we don’t already know the answer to most of them?

With so many questions about their top players and absolutely no room to maneuver under the salary cap, the Lakers won’t be in a position to improve until 2014. At that point, Dwight and Nash would be the only significant contracts on the books and they would have the freedom to make any number of moves. But while Los Angeles is a proven attraction in the free agent market, there’s no way to know what players will be available after next season. A number of big names could conceivably be in play, but as Dwight knows full-well, a lot can change in that much time.

In essence, while Mitch Kupchak can talk to Dwight about the labor pains, Daryl Morey can show him the baby. As Mark Cuban found out last summer, free agents value certainty more than “financial flexibility”. It’s easy for a GM to say they will improve the team down the road; it’s much harder to actually do it. That’s why so many Team USA players let their contracts lapse in the summer of 2010. If they were all free at the same time, they could lock themselves in a good situation without needing a front office to do much heavy lifting. From the players perspective, 99 percent of them haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, there’s more to Dwight’s decision than just basketball. Houston is a big market, but it doesn’t have the glamour or the weather of Los Angeles. The Lakers can offer him a fifth year and an extra $30 million and they will always be the most attractive destination for any player looking to build his brand. However, winning is the only thing that will fix Dwight’s brand now. If he leaves, he’ll be blasted for being disloyal, but if he stays and the team doesn’t improve, the knives will really come out. Money is money, but Dwight’s going to have to take less to win anyway. That’s what everyone in Miami did.

If Jerry Buss and Phil Jackson were the ones making the pitch to stay, a rebuilding year would be easier to swallow. Morey and Kevin McHale, in contrast, can pitch never rebuilding again. As Dwight ages out of his prime, Harden will just be entering his. In 2020, when Dwight is 35, Harden will be 31; Rockets versus Thunder could be the Spurs versus Mavericks of this decade. The Lakers might be able to find a star in 2014 or 2015, but he’ll probably be closer to Dwight’s age, shortening the window to win significantly. Things might work out there, but after the last two years, can Dwight risk turning down a sure thing?