Las Vegas' Big Time Tournament ready to get even bigger

So now that 557 games involving 224 teams at six sites are over, it's time to ask the all-important question: Has the annual Big Time Tournament gotten too big?

Not according to tournament co-director Larry McKay, who is planning to open the door for 16 more squads in next year's event.

"We have the capabilities with gyms and so forth to go to 240 teams," said McKay, who started the event with 64 teams just four years ago. "But I don't think going beyond 240 would make sense."

For some of the college coaches who descended Southern Nevada for the six-day extravaganza, having games at high schools as far apart as Cheyenne in North Las Vegas and Green Valley in Henderson doesn't make sense.

But McKay deflects criticism by arguing that limiting participation only reduces opportunities for young players to gain exposure.

"The college coaches in some cases complain about it being too large and the venues being too far apart, but it isn't just for the college coaches," McKay said. "And now, a lot of the colleges are bringing more than one person here (for the Big Time)."

McKay did say that once auxiliary gymnasiums are completed at Clark, Valley and Rancho, the tournament will consider those centrally located high schools.

This year, the event used main and auxiliary gyms at Cimarron-Memorial, Cheyenne, Green Valley, Silverado, Las Vegas and Durango, the tournament headquarters. Las Vegas was a last-minute replacement for Palo Verde, which was scrapped after the floor was deemed unusable.

As for rules changes, McKay said he and adidas Director of Basketball Operations Sonny Vaccaro have agreed to set an eligibility limit for participants.

"In the past, it's always been about getting recruitable kids seen by coaches," McKay said. "That meant that if a kid was going to go to prep school, he could play. Now there's more and more kids going to prep school, and because of that we're going to limit it to kids with high school eligibility left."

McKay also plans to restrict athletes from playing for more than one squad, another result of a trend he detected during this year's tourney.

"We allowed kids to play for their high school team and an all-star team," he said. "But we realize now that some other things can happen. A team can bring three squads, and if one gets knocked out, they can bring players from that team onto their other team."

Overall, though, McKay and Vaccaro left Durango after Monday's championship thrilled with the success of the nation's largest summer tournament.

"I think the city of Las Vegas should be as proud of this event as any convention they host," Vaccaro said.

"We accomplished what we wanted to accomplish," McKay said. "We got kids playing basketball for a week, and I think we did a lot for Las Vegas.

"They talk about visitors being down. But we brought 218 teams in from out of town and they all spent money on rooms and food, even if they didn't pull one slot machine."

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