BYU basketball: Post-tournament thoughts

A couple of thoughts after this week’s Mountain West Conference basketball tournaments …
1) No matter that UNLV outplayed BYU in the second half of the men’s championship game Saturday – Cougar fans are complaining that the Rebels benefited from playing on their home court at the Thomas & Mack Center.
Yes, there is an advantage. UNLV has reached five of the six MWC men’s championship games played there since the league’s start, starting in 2000, when the top-seeded UNLV won the tournament. Also, the Rebels lost in the 2002 finals as a No. 3 seed, lost in the 2003 finals as a No. 4 seed, and then won last year’s and this year’s tournaments as the No. 2 seed, beating top-seeded BYU both times.
The only time when UNLV didn’t reach the tournament finale was 2001 – BYU’s only time winning the tourney title. That was the year the Rebels were ineligible and didn’t participate in the MWC tournament.
But playing the tournament in Las Vegas makes sense for the Mountain West – it provides the conference with the biggest drawing power when it comes to fans. Vegas has plenty of hotels, is as easily accessed in late spring/early winter as any other conference city, and offers fans plenty of nonbasketball options – golfing, shows, restaurants, gaming, shopping and sights.
The Mountain West’s three-year experiment (2004-2006) in Denver didn’t work out – while Wyoming and Air Force drew fairly well, Colorado’s capital city is much of an early March destination unless you’re a skier, and the best slopes are at least two hours away from downtown Denver.
A note – UNLV reached the tournament championship only once during the three years in Denver.
San Diego could be an option – a nice fan destination, plenty to do and plenty of accommodations, although it tends to be pricier than Vegas in travel and accommodations and is on the farthest west reaches of the conference map. And unless you find a good-sized basketball arena other than SDSU’s Cox Arena, you’re in the same boat as having the tournament at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.
Before the Mountain West era, BYU and Utah fans will remember rotating tournament sites in the Mountain West – including the then-Delta Center in Salt Lake City. The same arena – now EnergySolutions – is a possibility, although other fans might find the Wasatch Front as similarly limited a destination as Denver in early March. And conference coaches might see two teams (Utah and BYU) as having a “home” advantage rather than just one team in UNLV.
Another possibility: retain the Vegas destination, but move the tournament competition to one of the casino hotel arenas. For example, BYU played in the Las Vegas Invitational earlier this year at the Orleans (when the Cougars beat Louisville and fell late to North Carolina in the Thanksgiving weekend four-team tournament).
So, here’s a quick summary of the possibilities besides the Thomas & Mack: Las Vegas and play at a casino hotel arena (Orleans, MGM, etc.); Salt Lake City and play at EnergySolutions Arena; San Diego and play at San Diego Sports Arena. Other than Denver and Dallas/Fort Worth, the three are the largest cities that host MWC members, that are easily accessible and have arenas that could host the tournament but are not a home court for one of the conference programs.
2. The 2007-08 season was one missed opportunity after another for the BYU women’s basketball team – and so the first-round tournament loss to New Mexico was a fitting exit for the Cougar women.
But New Mexico was a beatable opponent – BYU had downed the Lobos at The Pit earlier this year and lost a close affair in Provo. The two teams matched up well, and ended up being mirror images of each other. I think both struggled to regroup from last year’s graduations more than most thought would be the case – BYU losing the likes of Dani Wright, Jenni Keele and Melinda Johnsen (not to mention preseason injuries to Haley Hall and Mary Martha Abell) and UNM losing guard Katie Montgomery and frontliner Julie Briody.
For BYU, the tournament “what-ifs” loomed large … what if No. 5 seed BYU had beaten No. 4 New Mexico, advancing to the semifinals against No. 9 CSU, which upset regular-season champ Utah in the quarterfinals? And what if BYU would have beaten CSU and reached the finals against No. 6 seed San Diego State – a team it had beaten the last time they met – after the Aztecs upset third-seeded Wyoming and second-seeded TCU in the quarterfinals and semifinals?
Instead, it was New Mexico who took an easy road to the MWC Tournament title – beating a No. 5 seed (BYU) in the quarterfinals, a No. 9 seed (CSU) in the semis, and a No. 6 seed (SDSU) in the finals in one of the most skewed tourney finishes in recent memory.