Columnist Dean Juipe: Last hurrah for Rebels in tournament

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, March 12, 2003 | 10:08 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's an advantage that UNLV has enjoyed, yet one that's about to come to an end.

Tourist mecca or not, Las Vegas is hosting its final Mountain West Conference basketball tournament for a while, as the event shifts to the neutral site of the Pepsi Center in Denver next year.

For the Rebels, it's a serious loss and one that will annually impact their chances of advancing to the NCAA tournament.

For the rest of the league, it's an opportunity to level the playing field, albeit at the expense of sacrificing the convenience of meeting in Las Vegas and the revenues of a sold-out arena.

The MWC tournament, of course, opens today at the Thomas & Mack Center with four women's games, with the men beginning play Thursday. The home court is probably worth five or six points to a team such as the Rebels, in that they're familiar with the facility, know its sight lines and will have the bulk of the crowd in their favor.

They have to consider this week's games a last hurrah -- and one that very few conferences choose to bestow upon a member.

Most conference tournaments are slotted into neutral-site arenas, if not neutral-site cities.

Bias doesn't come into play -- or is, at least, minimal -- as the Pac-10 plays its tournament games at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, or as the ACC plays its at the Greensboro Coliseum. Likewise, conference tournaments such as those in the SEC (New Orleans), Big 12 (Dallas), Big Ten (Chicago), Big East (New York) and Big West (Anaheim) are held in locations where no one team holds a significant advantage.

Not that there aren't a handful of other UNLV-like exceptions, as Conference USA plays its tournament in Louisville, the America East plays its in Boston, the Big Sky plays its in Ogden (Weber State) and the Atlantic 10 plays its in Dayton, giving each a home-team break like that enjoyed by San Diego, which won the West Coast Conference championship on its home floor earlier this week.

Yet the Mountain West is diversifying, leaving the sometimes raucous Thomas & Mack for the stark, all-things-are-equal Pepsi Center. It's a move the league could come to regret for financial reasons, given that Denver is a city more attuned to professional sports and one that may not warmly embrace a college tournament it has previously lived without.

But playing the games in Denver will, in theory, produce a true league champion. And that hasn't always been the case in Las Vegas, where the Rebels have a terrific record and have been known to pull off an upset in a tournament game -- such as beating a Utah team that was headed for the national championship game in 1998 -- in large part because they were comfortable playing at home.

So what's the chance of something similar happening this week? Not too great, in my book.

UNLV opens with a rematch vs. San Diego State, having just defeated the Aztecs last Saturday in each team's final regular-season game. It's something of an iffy game, yet one that recent experience and the home floor tilts in the Rebels' favor.

Best I can tell, that will do it for UNLV's home-court advantage, as a likely second-round game with Utah is apt to be the end of the line for the Rebels.

I picture them bowing out Friday, and it won't have anything to do with a need or a desire to be hospitable.