Depending on your age...UNLV was in the Big West during it's glory days, and New Mexico has only 1 Sweet 16 ever (1974). SDSU won their first ever NCAA game in 2011. The MWC just hasn't ever done anything in the postseason. If you were thinking of CSU, Wyoming, Air Force, etc., you must have been a BYU fan that followed the MWC. That's the only possible explanation for your perspective. And as far as GU getting out-recruited by bottom feeder PAC-12 schools, that's just not true. As a matter of fact, not opinion.

There are only a couple small windows you could fit in age wise, where one of the bay area WCC schools wasn't doing pretty well. USF was still a power through the early 1980's, Pepperdine was extremely solid from the late 1970's through the early 2000's, Santa Clara had their years...certainly in the mid 1990's with Steve Nash, and SMC has been a competitive program for a decade, with 5 NCAA appearances and 4 NIT's since 2005. And then in the late 1990's to mid 2000's, Pacific had a number of NCAA tournament appearances and wins, and the #1 overall draft pick in 1998 (they weren't in the WCC, but I'm giving the MWC credit for the Nevada Nick Fazekas era in the early 2000's ).

The MWC...they don't have anyone that can stack up with GU. Gonzaga has 6 Sweet 16 (or better) appearances since 1999, including 2 Elite 8's. Gonzaga had 5 different players spend at least some time in the NBA this past season. They've had 11 different players spend time in the NBA since 2002. On the other hand, the last time a MWC school landed in the Elite 8, Tark was pacing the sideline at UNLV. The leftover MWC schools (plus one by Nevada) have 4 total Sweet 16's since UNLV's glory years ended in 1991. And they did end their--as bad as BYU's post-season struggles have been, the Cougars have 5 NCAA wins in the period since the Rebels last made a Final 4. UNLV has just 3, all coming in 2007 and 2008.

There just isn't a MWC school that has managed to do anything in nearly two and a half decades. As I've said, Gonzaga has had as much NCAA Tournament success since the MWC was created in 2000 as all 11 MWC schools combined. That's pretty much the end of the discussion, as far as the MWC compares to Gonzaga. There just isn't much of a comparison.