Vegas 16 tourney cuts field in half, endures delays, ridicule

Jim Livengood knew the criticism was going to come, so when it did Monday, he was prepared.

In consultation with tournament organizer Brooks Downing the day before, they realized as much as they wanted to stage a 16-team postseason college basketball tournament, it wasn’t feasible.

So the two agreed to cut the Vegas 16 field in half.

“We had two choices,” said Livengood, the former UNLV athletic director who is the tournament committee chairman. “We could go up 16, but it would be more of quantity and not as much as quality. We felt like the smartest thing to do, and we decided last night, was let’s just go with eight teams. Let’s make sure they’re eight quality teams and they were representative regionally, nationally and so on and so forth.”

The inaugural Vegas 16 released its bracket on Monday.

Because eight teams will participate, the tournament will begin two days later than scheduled on March 28 with four games at Mandalay Bay Events Center. The semifinals will be the following day and the championship game on March 30 at 7 p.m.

Every game will be broadcast by CBS Sports Network. The first two days weren’t scheduled for TV, so that made the decision to slice the field in two easier.

East Tennessee State (23-11) has the tournament’s highest RPI ranking at No. 86. UC Santa Barbara (18-13) has the best Kenpom ranking at No. 92.

The RPI and Kenpom rankings are what the NCAA Tournament committee use to create the 68-team NCAA tournament. But these teams were far beyond the top 68.

The most interesting team is Oakland (21-11), which features Kay Felder, a 5-foot 9-inch junior guard. He averages 24.2 points and 9.2 assists, earning Horizon League Player of the Year. Behind Felder, Oakland led the country with 86.3 points per game.

“Kay is a dynamic athlete who led the nation in assists and finished fourth in scoring,” Oakland coach Greg Kampe said in a news release. “He’s a SportsCenter Top-10 play waiting to happen every time he takes the court.”

Missing from the tournament, however, is the presence of a power-conference team, and Livengood acknowledged having such a school would have helped with credibility.

“With those power-five schools, they’re going to want to know who else is playing in it,” he said. “If you can get two of them, that’s all it takes. But when you get down through the NCAA and you get down through the 32 teams of the (National Invitation Tournament), there are not a lot of schools left that have had really good enough years.”

No Mountain West teams are in the tourney, either. Boise State appeared as if it was going to accept an invitation, but passed because of the lack of power-five schools.

“After discussing the options with our coaching staff, we didn’t think the postseason opportunities available to us were in the best interest of our program moving forward,” Boise State athletic director Curt Apsey said in a statement. “It has been a long season and we’re excited to focus our energies on next year.”

Unveiling the bracket took much longer than planned. The hope by organizers was it would occur at 9 a.m., but the bracket was not sent out until about 2:30 p.m.

The tournament got made fun of on Twitter, and a fake account even was created with its own “leaked” bracket in a parody of what happened to Sunday’s NCAA Tournament announcement. The bogus Vegas 16 bracke included teams such as the Harlem Globetrotters and “NBA Mascots.”

And the longer the delay, the more grief that came the tournament’s way.

“The frustration that I got from a whole number of people was that, ‘Hey, this thing is getting beat up, you’re just taking too long,’ ” Livengood said. “Believe me, I understand that. It’s one of those things that rather than be quick to pass, I think at the end of the day, it needs to be right.”

He said contracts had to be signed, which is what led to the delay. Each school must pay $50,000, but the tournament pays for most of the travel expenses.

Livengood also noted a first-year tournament has growing pains, and next season it will be better positioned. He said the general response of playing the entire event at one site has been well-received.

“We’re going to play around with some thoughts when the tournament’s over of what kinds of things make sense for next year,” Livengood said. “Remember, this was only announced at the end of November, first of December, so that’s a short time period. We will really have now the full year to get ready for 2017.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65