Court decision to determine future LV tournaments

Victoria Sun

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001 | 10:28 a.m.

Based on the turnout for last week's Las Vegas Invitational NCAA men's basketball tournament and the potential for greater success, promoter Chris Spencer of World Wide Basketball would like to hold tournaments here annually.

But it won't be up to Spencer whether or not that happens.

The fate of future basketball tournaments put on by World Wide Basketball is in the hands of the NCAA and a U.S. district court judge in Columbus, Ohio.

Sometime in the next two months Spencer expects to hear if the judge will grant an injunction filed by several tournament promoters to prevent the NCAA from enforcing the so-called "2-in-4" rule enacted three years ago. The rule states a team is only allowed to participate in two exempt basketball tournaments, such as the ones operated by World Wide Basketball, in a four-year period.

Last year, World Wide Basketball and other tournament promoters filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in hopes of eliminating the rule.

"If our lawsuit is successful, we want to be in Las Vegas in the future," Spencer said Wednesday. "We're hoping to build up the tournaments and get some stability."

The Las Vegas Invitational was the second of three eight-team tournaments organized by Spencer. It was played at Valley High School last Thursday through Saturday.

Spencer said the competitive field highlighted, by No. 2-ranked Illinois, Georgia Tech, Pennsylvania and Saint Louis, filled the 2,000 seat gymnasium to capacity.

In comparison, the first tournament, the Las Vegas Tourney (Nov. 19-21), drew only modest to fair crowds with Oklahoma State, the tourney champion, having the largest cheering section.

"I thought it went great," Spencer said of the tournaments. "Attendance wasn't so good for the first tournament, but for the second tournament it was great and I think a lot of that had to do with Illinois being there.

"We thought we'd get more walk-up attendance than we did, but it was our first year there. Overall, I thought it went well. We brought a lot of people to Las Vegas and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves."

The Las Vegas Classic, featuring Cincinnati, Purdue, Mississippi State, Texas A & M, Richmond, Southwest Missouri and Illinois-Chicago, will be held Dec. 20-22 at Valley High School.

If the 2-in-4 rule stays in place, Spencer doubts he could hold three tournaments here (or anywhere else for that matter) next year. Most of the top teams, including Illinois, top-ranked Duke and 12th-ranked Oklahoma State, would not be eligible to play.

All three of those teams participated in exempt events this year and last.

"We can't operate under the 2-in-4 rule," Spencer said. "You need the big boys to participate or no one will be interested.

"It's anti-competitive. Because of the rule, we can't schedule any teams for next year so we decided to file the injunction.

"If we win the injunction, it's more than likely the NCAA will settle with us."

Spencer said it will be at least six months to a year before the lawsuit is resolved.