The 2024-2025 Big West Men’s Basketball Preview & Countdown
Introduction and 2023-2024 Review
Welcome to the 2024-2025 Big West Preview and Countdown. For those not familiar with the Big West, it is a quiet west coast mid-major with a sensible geographic footprint with (nearly) all California members, stretching from UC San Diego in the south up to UC Davis in the north. The outlier is Hawaii which, all things considered, is not a bad place to visit once a year. More than half of the schooIs are in Southern California. The inherent strengths of the conference are its relative stability and, outside of the jaunt to Hawaii, easy travel. With its current member schools, the men’s basketball history lacks the Cinderella storylines some other mid-major conferences can boast of. The most consistently successful program of the past decade has been UC Irvine which owns one of the only two non-first-four NCAA tournament wins the conference has had in the past 20 odd years, the other being Hawaii in 2016.
I’ve had a look at each of the team’s rosters and am providing a team-by-team preview plus a look at the top players in the conference; returning and incoming. I’ve also written up a little on each home arena including places to eat & drink pre-game. This season brings two new coaches into the Big West fraternity, Mike DeJorge taking over the Cal Poly program and Chris Acker taking over for the BW Tournament champs Long Beach State.
To start things off, a quick recap of last year’s results, and how the results fared compared to my preseason picks.
2023-2024 Big West Results
For the 7th time in the last 10 seasons UC Irvine won the Big West regular season title. They tied for first in 2015-16 and in 2022-23. However their post-season woes continued as they were knocked off by 5th place Long Beach State in the conference tournament semi-finals. Long Beach was one of the more interesting stories of last year as they had disappointed in the regular season resulting in the firing of their long time coach Dan Monson right before the tournament began. Long Beach went on to knock off UC Davis and POY Elijah Pepper in the tournament championship to go dancing for the first time since 2012. They lost 85-65 to #2 Seed Arizona in the first round. Other noteworthy storylines of the season were one, UC San Diego, still in the transition period to full D1 status, finishing second in the conference. The Tritons are fully eligible this season. Two, first year coach Andy Newman, turning around CSUN and delivering the first winning season in 14 years for the Matadors. Three, former Big West POY Ajay Mitchell, a junior, was drafted in the 2nd round of the NBA Draft by the Oklahoma City Thunder. Mitchell is the first Big West player to be drafted since James Ennis of Long Beach in 2013.
Final 2023-2024 Regular Season Standings
Overall, things played out close to the prediction with CSUN (+3) and UCSD (+2) and being the biggest movers and with Fullerton (-4), UCSB (-4) & LB (-3) falling short the most. Long Beach State, of course, redeemed their disappointing regular season finish with a run to the Big Dance after the AD had fired their head coach Dan Monson
A quick note before getting into the preview, I will say that the job of prognostication is getting tougher every year. The portal had over 2,000 players enter, recruits are coming from all over the world, and, in a more recent trend, lower division schools are proving to be fertile recruiting grounds. Star rated HS players are still important but have a far diminished role. Landing experienced players is far more valued now. Major roster rebuilds used to be cyclical for programs but now, for many, it is an annual occurrence.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the top players in the conference, including my pre-season, All Big West Team.