Rebels and Aztecs play a key role in MWC Tourney seedings

SAN DIEGO — UNLV is really playing for nothing more than what color jersey and what locker room it gets to use for Thursday’s 2:30 p.m. Mountain West Tournament quarterfinal when it faces San Diego State here tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at Cox Arena.

Win or lose, Lon Kruger’s Rebels (21-8, 9-6) are locked in the 4 vs. 5 seed matchup with Steve Fisher’s Aztecs (20-8, 10-5). If UNLV wins, it will end up in a tie for fourth place with San Diego State in the final MWC standings but the Rebels would get the No. 4 seed … and the home uniforms … because they own the tiebreaker with the Aztecs by virtue of their regular season sweep of BYU.

BYU, Utah and New Mexico enter Saturday’s finales deadlocked at 11-4 at the top of the MWC standings and will likely end up in that order if all the home teams win tomorrow. New Mexico plays at Wyoming (18-11, 7-8) while BYU hosts winless Air Force (9-19, 0-15) and Utah plays slumping TCU (14-15, 5-10), which is just 3-9 on the road this season.

The bottom six teams are all locked into their slots for the tournament with the exception of UNLV and San Diego State who will play in the 4-5 game regardless. Wyoming is the No. 6 seed followed by TCU, Colorado State and Air Force.

So will be the No. 1, 2 and 3 seeds? Here are the scenarios.

BYU will get the No. 1 seed if it beats Air Force and San Diego State defeats UNLV at home. The Cougars would get the edge over Utah because they defeated the Aztecs twice during the regular season and seedings are based on who beat the higher-placed teams in the final standings.

However, if UNLV wins, it would be tied with the Aztecs but holds the tiebreak over the SDSU. Then Utah, if it defeats TCU, would be No. 1 because it beat UNLV once, while BYU was swept by the Rebels

Both the Utes and Cougars have the edge over New Mexico in any tiebreakers — BYU on the basis of its sweep of San Diego State and Utah on the basis of a higher RPI ranking, the next criteria when two teams have identical records of which teams they defeated.

If BYU, Utah and New Mexico all lose and San Diego State wins to create a four-way tie at 11-5, San Diego State would be the odd team out because of its two losses to BYU, which would be No. 1.