The center of the men’s college basketball conference tournament week universe is Las Vegas. Five tournaments call Sin City home, with essentially the entire West Coast converging on the city for a week of wall-to-wall college hoops.
This year’s trip to the desert was a bittersweet one. Conference realignment’s biggest victim is the presence of a so-called power conference out West, with the Pac-12 dissolving in what can best be described as a consolidation of power at the top of college sports. This week’s action marked the final Pac-12 men’s tournament before its schools split off for good.
But the vibe of the week wasn’t one of mourning. Instead, it was a changing of the guard. While the Pac-12 played its tournament in glitzy T-Mobile Arena on the Strip, equipped with a fan fest and signage everywhere, the attention of many in college basketball was all on the Mountain West tournament, played at the Thomas & Mack Center at UNLV. Odds are strong that the Mountain West will double up the Pac-12 in NCAA men’s tournament berths this season, and the quality of the product on display all week backed that up. The Pac-12 may outpace the Mountain West in budgets, TV deals or the other measuring sticks that have now taken over college sports boardrooms, but the on-court results are telling a different story.
