Barely a week after trailing UNLV by 27 and losing 76-66 at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center, the Boise State men’s basketball team gets to the face the Rebels in the same building Thursday in the quarterfinals of the Mountain West tournament.

One person who shouldn’t be complaining is Boise State coach Leon Rice.

The game could be at San Diego State’s Viejas Arena instead, and Rice was on a committee two years ago that could have helped assure that.

Instead, Rice and all but one member of the committee deciding where best to put the 2020 conference tournament — move it to San Diego or Phoenix for a year or keep it in Las Vegas but a week earlier than usual — opted for continuity. This, then, is the 18th time in the Mountain West’s 21-year history that Thomas & Mack has hosted it.


Most conference tournaments are at neutral cities or sites. A few are played in a member school’s home arena but are rotated or hosted by the regular-season champion. The Mountain West is the only conference that annually returns to the same arena of one of its schools.

“I’d just as soon it not stay at the Thomas & Mack all the time,” said Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher, echoing the sentiments of predecessor Steve Fisher, the most vocal proponent of moving the conference tournament to a neutral site, even in Las Vegas. “There hasn’t been a bigger uproar because Vegas hasn’t won it enough. If Vegas were to go ahead and win it two or three years in a row, there’d be an uproar like you’d never heard the likes of.

“But because they haven’t done that, the conference and everybody is fine with it being there.”

Big win for the Aztecs on Saturday; big week ahead in Las Vegas. @sdutzeigler and I talked about all of that and more on our latest podcast: https://t.co/67Duv7qFVd — Jay Posner (@sdutPosner) March 3, 2020


The Rebels have won the tournament just three times at Thomas & Mack, although they do have the second highest winning percentage in tournament history after SDSU (which has four titles there). UNLV’s last championship came in 2008.

But the conference was faced with a unique logistical challenge for 2020, with the 130,000-strong CONEXPO-CON/AGG construction trade show gobbling up hotel rooms during the second week of March, the usual slot for the Mountain West, Pac-12 and WAC tournaments. There was a similar conflict in 2017, and the Mountain West experienced a significant drop in attendance when fans opted against spending $400 per night for a hotel room on The Strip.

A committee of coaches and administrators was formed in 2017 to investigate options, and Viejas Arena emerged as a viable alternative for one or more years. The same SDSU group that puts together bids to host the NCAA Tournament made a proposal.

Aztecs women’s coach Stacie Terry was on the committee with Rice and worked hard to sway opinion.


“I don’t know that I convinced anybody else,” said Terry, who remembers being the lone dissenting vote. “I tried. I tried my best.”

Two things ultimately felled San Diego: costs and competitive balance.

The Mountain West has a sweetheart deal from Las Vegas Events, a nonprofit group funded by hotel taxes that brings high-profile events to the city (like the National Finals Rodeo each December at Thomas & Mack). The incentives reportedly include rent credits at Thomas & Mack, free or discounted hotel rooms and a cash subsidy believed to be six figures — a package Commissioner Craig Thompson said in 2015 was worth about $1 million per year to the conference.

“Fans really love Las Vegas,” said Dan Butterly, the Mountain West’s senior associate commissioner. “Research shows us that all the time. San Diego would be a great destination. It was strongly considered as a one-year option and then come back (to Las Vegas). One of the things when we looked at San Diego State’s numbers, it was significantly more costly to come to play at Viejas Arena than it was to stay in Las Vegas and play a week earlier.


“The membership ultimately made the decision that they wanted to be in Las Vegas and play a week earlier.”

The other hurdle was home-court advantage.

“It was interesting,” Terry said, “because they used Coach Fisher’s argument about moving it out of (Thomas & Mack) against us. I thought that was interesting, because it was just one year. … And I didn’t understand that, because we play at UNLV’s home every year.”

Dutcher, whose team went 17-1 and won the regular-season title by a record five games, was asked about it Tuesday. They play the Fresno State-Air Force winner at Thomas & Mack in Thursday’s first quarterfinal at 11:30 a.m.


“Obviously it was voted on and not accepted,” Dutcher said. “I think a large part of that is because we have hung a lot of banners, more than anybody in the conference. Somebody didn’t want to give San Diego State that advantage because maybe they felt we were more dangerous.”