New commissioner looks to elevate Big West men’s basketball

Dan Butterly was at the Mountain West from the beginning, one of the chief decision-makers as the conference went through major changes over 21 years.

He left last June to become commissioner of the Big West Conference, trading snowy winters in Colorado for Southern California’s year-round mild temperatures and, more importantly, a chance to put his own imprint on a league.

In consultation with others invested in the conference, such as presidents and athletic directors, Butterly is assessing where the Big West stands.

“I don’t know if there’s ever been a really deep brand dive on the Big West on what we do and what our membership wants us to do,” he said. “We’re going to find some of those answers in the next few weeks. We’re going to come out with a strategic plan. We’re going to come out with a lot of different things.”

Already, Butterly said, the feedback he is getting is emphasizing the importance of improving men’s basketball, which along with the women opened conference tournament play Tuesday at Michelob Ultra Arena in Mandalay Bay. The conference’s highest-ranked men’s team in the NCAA’s NET ratings is UC Santa Barbara, which was 55th entering Tuesday.

One way the conference can help its member teams, Butterly said, is to plug into the analytics of putting together a competitive schedule that can help improve national rankings.

“We’re in a different position in the Big West than the Mountain West and the Pac-12,” he said. “They’ve got greater financial resources. They can buy home games, whereas the Big West institutions are more being bought for home games to help them fund their athletic departments.

“There are games you can get bought, and there are games you can get bought and have a chance to win. Those are the opportunities we need to look at and take advantage of.”

The aim would be to elevate the conference to the point where a team doesn’t have to regularly win the league tournament to make the NCAAs. To that end, Butterly might not point so much to his experience in the Mountain West — which routinely sends multiple teams — but to the West Coast Conference that is home to top-ranked Gonzaga.

“Gonzaga didn’t happen overnight,” Butterly said. “Gonzaga happened over many, many years. … That’s exactly what we aspire to have is those lead institutions. San Diego State, UNLV and New Mexico were the lead national brands in men’s basketball in the Mountain West, and that’s the same type of national brand we need to develop in the Big West.”

Contact reporter Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.