The Mountain West Conference is conducting its men's basketball media day today in Denver, and the league will announce the preseason all-conference team and other honors (media members voted on them last week) today. Obviously, this will be the last MWC media day for BYU basketball coach Dave Rose. Next year, he will participate in the West Coast Conference's event. Another BYU coach has already won a preseason award, of sorts. BYU assistant Dave Rice was voted the top assistant coach in the league in this poll conducted by Jeff Goodman of Fox Sports. ——————————— It will be interesting to see which team is picked to win the MWC today — BYU or San Diego State. Readers of this blog know I picked SDSU, with its five returning starters and a key transfer from Santa Clara. From reading blogs of other people who cover the MWC, and how they voted, it is going to be close, but I think the nod will go to SDSU. We will see. It will be a shocker if a player besides BYU's Jimmer Fredette, SDSU's Malcolm Thomas and Kawhi Leonard, UNLV's Tre'Von Willis or UNM's Dairese Gary earns preseason all-conference honors. Those five seem like shoo-ins. Preseason player of the year will be either Fredette or Leonard. BYU's Kyle Collinsworth has a good shot to be freshman of the year. I voted for New Mexico's Drew Gordon, a transfer from UCLA, to be newcomer of the year.————————— While the basketball coaches are talking in Denver today, the MWC's football coaches will participate in the weekly MWC teleconference. Follow me on twitter (@drewjay) for a few highlights from what BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall has to say today. Until then, here's a few morning links: * I wrote about BYU's future football schedules a few weeks ago, but the story never made the newspaper. Here's a re-tooled version of that, with the updates from the past few weeks and how athletic director Tom Holmoe has gone about working on the 2011 and 2012 schedules, especially. * Here's my notebook from Monday's news conference, with a lead about how coach Bronco Mendenhall basically said the Cougars ran the ball a lot on SDSU because they could. The Aztecs have all kinds of talent, but they are still soft up the middle. Probably always will be.