Tournament site topic too hard to let pass at media day

By Ryan Greene

Friday, Oct. 17, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

Call it the 18,500-seat gorilla in the middle of the hotel lobby.

That's essentially what the Thomas & Mack Center was relegated to during Tuesday's Mountain West Conference basketball media day at the off-Strip Renaissance Hotel. It was only a matter of time until nearly each coach on hand was prompted to share his thoughts on the Mack being the home of the league's postseason tournament.

The fact of the matter is that no matter how much anyone in the league despises the thought of it, Thomas & Mack plays host to the MWC Tournament for at least two more years. At that point, the league brass can extend it two more seasons, through 2012, or go somewhere else.

Conference commissioner Craig Thompson said Tuesday that a sub-committee is looking at other sites, including the Thomas & Mack Center. It will make its report sometime in the winter. In April, it will make a recommendation to the Board of Directors, comprised of the school presidents. In June, the Board will vote on 2011 and beyond.

But that's two years down the road. This is now.

"It's an added challenge to the already-difficult challenge of trying to win a conference tournament championship," BYU coach Dave Rose said. "But the bottom line as a coach is you try to control the things that you can. We'll say as much about our personal opinions as we can, but in the end, we'll be told where we're gonna play, so that's what we do."

That may not be what you'd expect to hear from a coach whose team has fallen in the title game of the past two tournaments to Lon Kruger's 'home' Rebels. UNLV has reached the finals in each of the five seasons the postseason tournament has taken place at the Thomas & Mack. Making things look even a bit more slanted is the fact that BYU, the team UNLV topped in each of those championship tilts, was the regular season league champ each time. It brings the question of what would happen on a truly neutral site.

"There's definitely a lot of controversy over the issue, but I think Las Vegas is definitely the best place to have the tournament," UNLV senior Joe Darger said. "You get a lot more people out to the games and stuff like that. My first year here playing at Denver, it wasn't a good showing crowd-wise. Since it's been out here it's kinda doubled in size. I can see how teams can come in and see it as an unfair advantage, but they do as much as they can to make it not like a home game for us. They make us practice in different high schools all week, make us change lockers, we can't wear our home uniforms."

Darger's pretty spot on with his attendance estimates. Last year, the average attendance was 13,483. In 2006 in Denver, it was 7,489.

"I think for the league, Las Vegas is clrearly the best place to host the tournament," Kruger said. "If we want to be a big-time conference, then we need a big-time atmosphere at our showcase event, and we've had that the last couple of years. I also understand as an opposing coach you don't like coming into someone's home arena. I guess that's why there'll be another vote soon as to what happens with the conference tournament."

Of course, it's also easy for there to be beef with UNLV essentially playing home games during the final weekend before the NCAA Tournament since the Rebels have turned into one of the league's perennial front-runners in recent seasons.

The question becomes: Would there be as much apprehension to keep things in Vegas if UNLV was an annual bottom-feeder in the conference ranks?

"A lot has to do with coach Kruger and the program that he has rolling right now," Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer said. "He has it rolling like nobody in the West, outside of UCLA.

"I think it's really hard for eight of us to try to win two neutral games and a road game, for all intents an purposes. I think that's hard. I take nothing away from Lon."

Plus, of course, what would a series of comments regarding the tournament site be without a Steve Alford appearance? The second-year New Mexico coach has been as outspoken as anyone during his short tenure in Albuquerque.

"We're not football," Alford said. "Football, you can go 6-6, and they call you bowl eligible, so it's been a successful year. You're 6-6 in basketball, you're getting fired; that's the bottom line.

"You've got 340 schools competing for 65 spots (in the NCAA Tournament), so if you really want fairness in a competitive nature, you have to have a neutral site and obviously in our league right now we don't have that."