BRIDGEPORT - At one point last season, the Mountain East Conference had three men's basketball teams ranked among the nation's top five.
On Tuesday, as the league's 12 schools met for the conference's media day, the conversation surrounding the new season focused on where the MEC can go next as it continues to emerge as arguably the nation's best Division II conference.
"This league is the toughest league in the nation, in my mind," West Virginia State coach Bryan Poore said. "There's no league around that's doing what this conference is doing and there's no league in the country that is a tougher challenge to get wins on a nightly basis."
It will look a bit different this year. The MEC lost five players who earned first team all-conference honors last season. That list includes conference and national Player of the Year Seger Bonifant, the former West Liberty forward who averaged 24.4 points and more than five rebounds per game and scored at least 20 points in 22 games while leading the Hilltoppers to their third Final Four in four years.
Even with several top players departing from the league, many of the teams already have players ready to emerge in their place as the conference appears to be ready to reload.
"It's amazing to look at last year and see that we have eight or nine guys who went from MEC school to playing professionally overseas," Fairmont State coach Jerrod Calhoun said. "This is a players league, and we have great coaches who bring in the right guys and play a fantastic style that is a lot of fun for people to watch."
That ability to reload is the thing that is most impressive to University of Charleston coach Dwaine Osborne. For the MEC to be able to continue to reinvent itself with new players, he said, is a testament to what the coaches are able to do and the type of culture that has been able to exist in the years since the league began.
"There's never a drop-off, and that's the amazing thing. Teams can lose two or three key guys and still come back as strong as they were before," Osborne said. "You have to give these teams a lot of credit for the way they've all been able to just keep going and continuing to get better."
During each of their stints at the podium on Tuesday, every coach in the league talked about the daunting task that comes from playing in the MEC. Every game, no matter who they are playing on a given night, each team knows that it's going to be in for a battle.
Last season, the MEC had two of the 10 highest-scoring teams in the country and had eight teams that averaged at least 80 points per game.
"It's difficult because not only are the players great but so are the coaches," Osborne said. "It's one thing to have to stop a lot of these players who are some of the elite Division II players in the country, but you also have to find ways to outsmart some great coaches."
After Concord pulled off an upset to win the conference tournament and earn an automatic bid, the MEC had four teams make it to the NCAA tournament.
With West Liberty looking to keep its place atop the league as Fairmont State and Wheeling Jesuit threaten them for the top spot and several other teams lurk around, trying to find their way up into that upper echelon in the league, there's no question that the upcoming season could be one of the best and most competitive seasons the league has seen.
Right now, the MEC's focus is on continuing to assert itself as the nation's best conference - and, potentially, even taking another step up from last season.
"There's certainly the potential for this league to get even tougher, as hard as that is to believe," Calhoun said. "You can't ever count anyone out. We'll be able to tell about a month or so into the season, it's going to be interesting to see how difficult it's going to be to win in this conference."
Contact Michael Carvelli at 304-348-4810 or michael.carvelli@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @carvelli3.