Columnist Dean Juipe: Tournament hits the road to spite UNLV

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, March 10, 2004 | 9:28 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.

If you're wondering why the coaches, athletic directors and faculty reps in the Mountain West Conference wanted to move the league's annual postseason basketball tournament from Las Vegas to Denver, look no further than the current UNLV men's basketball team.

These Rebels -- athletic yet fundamentally askew, talented yet unpredictable, beatable yet sometimes tough to beat -- fit the prototype of a team that could benefit by playing a tournament on its home floor. And this is just what the other Mountain West teams were tired of, afraid of and trying to protect themselves from when they voted to move the league's annual tournament from a central location and a vibrant city to one where the bars close at 2 a.m.

If the Rebels were habitually laggard and predictably complacent, Las Vegas and its Thomas & Mack Center could host the Mountain West tournaments ad infinitum. It is, after all, the ideal site for a basketball tournament, vacation or respite and has a far greater and broader appeal than Denver will ever be able to muster.

Yet there was not only a fear but a track record of UNLV playing a little better in the MWC tournament than it might have had it not always been the home team. The Rebels were utilizing a home-court advantage and reaping the dividends, be it berths in the NCAA tournament or the lesser NIT.

Similarly, if the Rebels were always the class of the league and annually the team to beat, their conference cohorts would have been less judgmental and far more likely to extend the league's contract with the T&M. If the bulk of the MWC teams were willing to annually concede the tournament championship to UNLV, the event would never have been moved from here.

But what has happened with some regularity in recent years is just what has happened so far this year: UNLV, at 7-7 in conference play, is a middle-of-the-pack team with an outside shot of winning the Mountain West Conference tournament and advancing to the NCAA tournament next week. Put that MWC tournament in Las Vegas and the Rebels' chances are greatly improved; put it elsewhere and the playing field is, as they like to say, leveled.

It's leveled in Denver, where even the league's two Colorado-based schools will have little or no advantage beyond a greater familiarity with playing at a higher elevation. Neither Air Force, with its compact group of followers, nor Colorado State, with its extremely mediocre team, will unduly benefit from the site of the men's tournament beyond the fact they're not sacrificing any advantage to UNLV as they would be if the tournament were still here.

That tournament was a success here, by the way, and not just from a local (win-loss) perspective. Las Vegas can handle an influx of basketball teams and their fans, and the games ran smoothly and without complaint for the four previous years of the MWC's existence (and for three earlier seasons as well, when UNLV was part of the Western Athletic Conference).

Attendance was good and everyone was happy at least with the facility and the city, if not with the tournaments' results.

But an element of jealousy came into play, if the behind-the-scenes whispers are to be believed, and the tournament was hoisted onto its moving blocks because at least one influential coach deplored the fact the cards were stacked in UNLV's favor. Rick Majerus, ex of Utah, was that alleged culprit and the man more than one insider said was behind the campaign to move the tournament out of Las Vegas.

He got what he wanted, as did the others who had a vote. The majority spoke and has ruled.

As a result they get to spend a few days in scenic if chilly Denver, where igloos and fur trappers alike are durable and hearty and the golf courses actually thaw out for a month or two in the summer.

I make it 2-1 they'll junk this experiment before too long and move the tournament back to a place where almost everyone likes to visit and have fun, even if it does provide UNLV with an upper hand it wouldn't otherwise enjoy.