MW commissioner Craig Thompson hopes for return to basketball glory
It was just four years ago that the Mountain West sent five men’s basketball teams to the NCAA Tournament and two years ago that three teams went.
Those were times when the Thomas & Mack Center would draw crowds for the conference tournament large enough to populate much of the upper section.
A time that seems much longer than four, or even two, years ago.
An average crowd of 5,301 showed up through the first three sessions this week at the 18,000-seat arena, and for the second year in a row, the Mountain West is expected to be a one-bid league.
The question isn’t so much how did the conference get here, but can it return to its more proud recent past?
Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said the facilities around the conference show the potential is there to return to those times of not so long ago.
“This is the Taj Mahal,” Thompson said, referring to UNLV’s Mendenhall Center practice facility. “And we’ve got that at San Diego State, and we’ve got it at New Mexico. We’ve got five or six stand-alone facilities. We’ve got the resources, the tools, so I hope not (that it’s a long-term downturn). But the oldest cliche in the book is a dollar bill doesn’t block a shot.
“We’ve done it before. I’m not afraid that we won’t be able to do it again.”
The Mountain West will play its championship game at 3 p.m. Saturday. CBS will air the game between top-seeded UNR and second-seeded Colorado State.
If the downturn is part of the larger problem of the Power 5 conferences creating more distance, then the Mountain West faces a crisis that will be extremely difficult to solve. Those power conferences can provide greater resources because of their robust TV contracts.
Maybe, however, this isn’t a crisis but more a temporary setback. The three programs the Mountain West count on most — the ones with the greatest track records and the ones that drive the most intense crowd support — are UNLV, New Mexico and San Diego State.
UNLV ended this season 11-21 and hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2013. New Mexico is 17-14, its season most likely done, and will miss the NCAAs for the third year in a row.
The Aztecs have experienced the most recent success, and they have drawn the strongest crowds this week, but San Diego State is looking at back-to-back seasons of not making the NCAAs.
“We’ve got to have those people play at a little bit higher level,” Thompson said of the three programs. “The good news is the middle of the league has gotten much better. So we’ve got to look at the whole thing.”
Thompson also has the issue of the first-round games being only available online.
He downplayed not having over-the-air broadcasts for the Wednesday games, saying viewing habits now come in many forms, and that just because a game is on a cable network doesn’t mean it’s drawing many eyeballs.
“Perceptually, it’s on TV, but on a given Saturday or Tuesday night or Wednesday night, it’s one of a dozen telecasts,” Thompson said. “The people that want to watch it can find it if we have the digital process, but we have to teach them how and make them understand that there are options.”
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Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.