Except for Dave Rice of Nevada-Las Vegas perhaps, Mountain West basketball coaches didn’t exactly do backflips when the conference announced recently that its men’s and women’s tournaments would remain at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center for at least another three years, through 2016.

New Mexico men’s coach Steve Alford said a vote by the league’s coaches is always unanimous in favor of playing the tournament at a neutral site. Presumably, UNLV’s Rice recuses himself.

“It’s obvious that the (athletic directors) and presidents have all voted, and their vote obviously counts more than ours,” Alford said during the weekly Mountain West teleconference.

Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson has pointed out that the league tournaments annually gross about $2 million when played in Las Vegas, while they averaged about half that amount in Denver during a three-year stay (2004-06) at the Pepsi Center.

Since Mountain West tournaments returned to the Thomas & Mack Center in 2007, the UNLV men’s team failed to advance to the semifinals only once. The host Rebels reached the title game three times during that six-year span, winning in 2007 and 2008 — both times as the lower seed in the finale. Conference champions, of course, are rewarded with automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament.

“I have been on the soapbox to say this isn’t fair,” San Diego State men’s coach Steve Fisher told The San Diego Union Tribune. “What’s thrown back in our face is that UNLV can be beaten there. That’s ridiculous.”

Another Las Vegas venue, the MGM Grand Garden Arena, will for the first time host the Pac-12 men’s event during the same dates (March 12-16) the Mountain West Tournament is being played.

Thompson has said the MGM arena, with a capacity of less than 15,000, isn’t big enough for Mountain West tournaments. The Thomas & Mack Center holds 18,500, and it was sold out for the 2011 men’s championship game.

“Obviously, it’s all about money,” said Colorado State men’s coach Larry Eustachy. “And, as they say, it’s not growing on trees.”

The Mountain West will bring in a new court and basketball standards for the tournaments and dress up the Thomas & Mack Center with the conference logo.

“Like that’s going to make it fair,” Fisher said.

Parity rules. Entering the weekend, 48 of the 83 Pac-12 men’s games had been decided by less than 10 points, 34 by five points or fewer. Colorado coach Tad Boyle isn’t sure if parity helps or hurts the conference in the eyes of the NCAA selection committee.

“But as long as your league does good in the nonconference, which our league did, those (Pac-12) losses don’t become bad losses,” Boyle said.

Lesson for young players. You often hear players say they need to work on their overall skills. That’s fine. But Air Force senior guard Michael Lyons, the Mountain West’s leading scorer (averaging 18.8 points), also was determined to improve a particular facet of his game each year. Lyons, for example, is a much better 3-point shooter than he was as a freshman.

And he has become more adept at posting up and attacking the rim.

“This year, Michael has probably made the biggest improvement on the team at the defensive end,” said Air Force coach Dave Pilipovich. “That has aided his offense. He gets his hands on more balls.”

Tom Kensler: 303-954-1280, tkensler @denverpost.com or twitter.com/ tomkensler