The real problem with the WCC tournament is the complete lack of intrigue.
Gonzaga just won for the 20th time under Few. They’ve been every year he’s been the coach.
The next most successful school, who is almost always their finals opponent, is the smallest in the league by students and likely total alumni. There just aren’t that many Gaels in the world.
The last legitimately interesting result of a WCC Tournament was… 2008 when USD won, and beat UConn in round one?
Why on earth would a fan of Pepp, Pacific, LMU, etc drop the money to go - the same thing always happens.
With an eye towards known and possible expansion schools, I checked approximate attendance figures for Seattle (under 1,000) and Irvine and UCSD (both roughly in the 2,500 range, with occasional games up to 4,000).
As we all knew, thats not going to come anywhere close to replacing the lost attendance from the departing fan bases. I don’t see how the WCC continues at Orleans under the current game format, as Buckets outlined so well.
This thread had me wondering how many non-neutral conference tournaments there are, i.e., hosted on campuses or played in a city where one of the members is located.
A quick google reveals that the Ivy League still rotates around the schools.
Other ‘campus site’ tournaments are:
America East
ASUN
Horizon (early rounds)
NEC
Patriot
So certainly a lower tier of D1 leagues.
Incidentally, the SEC tournament is held in Nashville, which is the home city of one of its members, although the games are played at the Predator’s arena.
Other non-neutral host cities:
The Mountain West obviously plays in Vegas, home of UNLV.
The MEAC plays in Norfolk, and Norfolk State is a member.
The Horizon plays in Indianapolis, home of IUPUI (now IU-Ind).
The A-10 plays in DC, home of Georges Mason and Washington.
It just seems silly to me that all but one of the Western leagues - Big West, WAC, Mountain West, WCC and formerly the Pac-12 all play in metro Vegas (the outlier is the Big Sky, who plays in Boise).
Riffing off of my idea of having the first round on higher seed’s home court, and then semifinals/final at a neutral site…assuming there is desire to give an off day in between games…perhaps a way to get more people to attend would be to have another event or two (maybe a concert or something else) sandwiched somewhere between “arrive at neutral city” to “final champ crowned”.
Part of the draw of Vegas is that there are plenty of other things to do outside of the games themselves: gambling, shows, good dinners, hiking, etc.
I remember going to Boise for the 1st round NCAA in 1995. Outside of the games (which were very entertaining), there was not much else to do but hit the bars (it was too cold to really want to do anything outdoors (other than ski), but the skiing is 3 hours away and by that time of year, the snow isn’t great. Honestly, it was boring.
I think the best answer is keep it in Vegas. Sure, Acrisure in Palm Springs is an option, but it has even more seats than the Orleans Arena.
If they could make it easier to go back and forth between the Strip and Lee’s Family Forum (a little over half the size of Orleans) in Henderson, then that would be a great answer.
Like the looks of Tahoe Blue center, 4,700 capacity for basketball.
But it’s South shore so 55 miles and 1hr drive from Reno and as Patty notes weather could be challenge, Hwy 55 over the pass to Reno can be horrible if not closed all together with winter weather.
March is Tahoe’s snowiest month with much of that front-loaded in the first couple of weeks. I love the idea of Tahoe if it were 3k feet lower in elevation with more than 2 access points.
Maybe we should just send everyone to Cabo San Lucas for a really unique March college basketball experience?
That would be cool, but I’m willing to bet that no team from this league wants to play at altitude, especially back to back. The quality of play on the second straight night (let alone third) at 6,000+ feet could really suffer.
Not sure this would work from a psychological aspect. Very few fans would commit to coming to a neutral site until after that first round of games, and then it’s too late. Plane tiks would be $$$.
It’s not like fans are waiting on WCC tourney seeding like they are for their team’s name to come up on the Selection Sunday show and they have Expedia open in multiple browsers with tickets to every first-round city ready to be booked–cost be damned. For the WCC tourney, elasticity* is low.
I had considered that maybe the 1-2 seeds get byes (it has advantages from an RPI standpoint)–so you at least have 2 team’s fans committing early. But then I thought the top 4 is better, so even more fans would commit. But even the 3-4-5-6 seeding may not be known until the Sat night before. So middling team’s fans won’t commit until the last night in league, if they commit at all.
Better off just throwing all teams into the tourney. If there is hope, the fans will might maybe possibly come. Agree with @getnashty that the zags dominance (pick your reason) has made the tournament predictable. But without them, we are back in the late 80s and early 90s. I recall that Toso was packed for those games…
I just buy a bunch of tickets for each day of the tournament and then cancel the ones I don’t end up using. Get the cheapest tickets, and there are no change fees anymore so all of the canceled flights become credits for future flights. However, I realize not everyone flies as much as I do.
As a Boise native feeling a need to speak up, Buckets, and say that the skiing is 45 minutes away from downtown Boise, not three hours. Overall point taken, Boise is not the entertainment hub on the level of Las Vegas, but easy access to skiing is something that stands out about Boise.
If it were up to me, this event should be in San Diego. I think San Diego is the best location in the WCC, it’s easy to access, it’s a great city, and Jenny Craig is likely the nicest gym in the conference, which could probably fill for the tourney.
San Diego would be great. As you said, the Slim Gym is perfect size for such a tournament. Plus, there are plenty of hotels around of various qualities, offering accommodations for nearly every economic class. And the weather is normally better than just about any other WCC location, other than Pepp and LMU. (Funny enough, though, there are times when they get rains that don’t even hit us down here, just 100 miles or so south)
Selfishly, Jenny Craig Pavilion is only about 10-15 minutes from me.
I’m watching the semis of the A10 Tournament in DC. The Capital One Center is maybe half full–pretty good! Many Loyola Chicago fans are there despite being the lower seed and having a relative down season.
The A10 is about where the WCC is this season with 6 top 110-ish teams but no teams at the top as good as Gonzaga and SMC. But seeing the engagement leads me to believe that there is hope for the WCC Tournament if we can correct the ridiculous structure, get it to a more accessible location, and break up the Zags-Gaels duopoly a bit.
If the WCC stays in Vegas in 2026, each school should commit to sending 100 students beyond the spirit squads. It’s not colege basketball without students in the crowd
