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The Mountain West Conference men’s basketball coaches are keeping the media out of the voting for this year’s postseason honors.

The coaches voted to do so during their annual meetings last spring, but several reporters covering the league, including the Journal’s Geoff Grammer, just learned this week about the change in policy.

Javan Hedlund, the league’s associate commissioner for communications, said Wednesday that the coaches did so, in part, because some media were making public the coaches’ nominations for certain postseason awards, including player of the year. Coaches “did not think that was beneficial for the schools or the league,” Hedlund said.

Only players nominated by the coaches are eligible for the specific awards, as opposed to an entirely open, write-in ballot.

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Each team’s coach and two media members designated by the school have been voting. Last year, it was Grammer and UNM play-by-play announcer Robert Portnoy. The media component had comprised 50 percent of the total vote; the coaches got the other 50 percent.

The league’s prerequisites were that voters would cover all the team’s home games and most road games. The Journal staffs all Lobo regular-season games, home and away.

The Journal began to publish who was nominated two seasons ago, when readers wanted to know why center Alex Kirk was not being considered for MWC Player of the Year. Grammer reported that Steve Alford had nominated only Kendall Williams, who eventually won the award, and nominated Kirk for Defensive Player of the Year.

Coaches are not limited in how many players they can nominate, but most are unwilling to nominate more than one for a particular award for fear of a split vote for their players.

Hedlund referred to “an unwritten rule” that media not publish the ballot, but acknowledged that the league and coaches could make it a written rule but have not. He likened it to reporters taking information on background, or “off the record.” Grammer said he never had been asked in advance not to publish the ballot.

“Asking the media to stay quiet about a voting process that coaches were allowed to manipulate was not a journalistic standard” the Journal found agreeable, Grammer said Wednesday.

The media had taken part in the postseason awards election for more than a decade in men’s basketball. The media also votes for football award winners.

The coaches and league still ask the media to vote in October for the preseason All-MWC teams and individual honors, as well as the All-Mountain West tournament team each March.