Basketball challenge small part of bigger Mountain West problem

UNLV plays a basketball game against Southern Illinois on Monday night at the Thomas & Mack Center, and for those who don’t know, which is the majority of folks in Las Vegas and Carbondale and everywhere in between and beyond, it’s part of a challenge between the Mountain West and Missouri Valley conferences.

The contrived series of games have created the national intrigue of a toll booth operator making change, ones nobody really cares about outside the two league offices and that Mountain West coaches unanimously fought against.

That’s right — from top to bottom, when doors closed and debate began, those who must prepare for and direct their teams in such games didn’t support this in any way.

Said one coach: “No one wanted it.”

Which tells you how much the Mountain West listens to its own.

The challenge itself, renewed last season after a three-year absence, was thought by Mountain West suits as a way to prop up the league’s bottom tier of teams by scheduling games they might not otherwise play and help improve their Ratings Percentage Index to avoid an annual reality of becoming a one-bid conference for the NCAA Tournament.

But that’s exactly what the Mountain West appears to be yet again, even worse than last season when only conference tournament champion Fresno State received a berth and a 16-2 regular-season champion in San Diego State wasn’t selected.

Blame can certainly be spread around for such an undesirable fate, first to a conference whose reasoning for supporting the challenge against Missouri Valley teams has backfired and produced opposite results by damaging the resumes of the better Mountain West teams, but also to those programs not holding up their end.

The New Mexicos and San Diego States and Boise States of the Mountain West might have legitimate reasons to complain this season about being forced to play road games at times within schedules they wouldn’t otherwise accept, but there is an easy solution to their woes. Don’t lose to teams like Illinois State and Loyola-Chicago and Evansville.

Stop whining. If you’re better, win and move on, which is what UNR did in traveling to a bad team (Bradley) and taking care of business.

This next part isn’t written while crossing my fingers and toes or with a sarcastic grin, but the conference is attempting to improve things. It’s at least making an effort, having devised an eight-point plan of recommendations for teams to begin following next season in terms of non-conference scheduling.

The problem is, should teams refuse to embrace a proposed strategy that includes such things as playing an exempt event and at least one game in the Central or Eastern Time Zone and three on the road or at a neutral site against Top 150 RPI opponents, any monetary penalties that don’t own a sharp pair of teeth will prove the entire process futile.

You can’t, for example, demand a team increase a buy budget for what should be guaranteed wins from $100,000 to $300,000 if you’re only going to fine it $10,000 for not complying.

That’s bad math and won’t make your point. Good luck, by the way, collecting any such fines.

Here’s the bigger issue: This really isn’t a scheduling problem for Mountain West basketball any more. It’s bigger than that.

It’s a players’ problem.

There aren’t enough good ones signing with the conference, which happens when your league becomes so weak.

Which makes this the most important question: Is it too late to avoid an annual one-bid fate?

League officials want you to believe this is merely a momentary downturn in what is a cyclical process that will soon rebound to a time of multiple NCAA bids. That’s a huge stretch, because more and more, this has the appearance of a one-bid league.

You might reach the point Mountain West basketball is today seemingly overnight — only two teams in the top 100 of both RPI and KenPom — but it takes much longer to recover. Nothing suggests it’s going to get better any time soon.

It all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for coaches with financial incentives for wins built into their contracts when scheduling non-conference games.

If you secretly believe yours is a one-bid-league and there isn’t enough juice by the time conference play begins to overcome bad losses in November and December, why schedule tougher?

Why not just be as good and healthy as possible to try and make a run three days each March to claim the NCAA’s automatic berth at the conference tournament?

UNLV hosts Southern Illinois on Monday night in what is the final game of this year’s Mountain West-Missouri Valley Challenge.

The MVC leads the series this season 5-4.

Nobody really knows or cares about that outside the respective leagues, because in the case of what ills Mountain West basketball, it’s a bug on the windshield of much larger issues.

Contact columnist Ed Graney at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.