When Steve Cleveland left Brigham Young last spring to coach Fresno State, Wyoming’s Steve McClain became dean of Mountain West Conference men’s basketball coaches.
McClain is the only coach still in place since the MWC began with the 1999-2000 season, and the nuances of the new scheduling format are more disconcerting to him than most coaches.
Going back to its Western Athletic Conference roots, MWC scheduling had symmetry with its travel-partners philosophy. The original eight-team league made for four geographical pairings – Colorado State-
Wyoming; BYU-Utah; Air Force-New Mexico; and San Diego State-UNLV. Each pair of schools would visit another pair and switch locations in the Saturday-Monday format. If CSU played at San Diego State on a Saturday, Wyoming tipped off in Las Vegas against UNLV and they traded sites on Monday.
Enter Texas Christian as the MWC’s ninth wheel, a Wednesday-Saturday format and random scheduling. Gone are two games for the price of one plane trip on the CSU-Wyoming and BYU-Utah swings.
“The hardest part about it is you have to actually look at the schedule to figure out who is playing who,” McClain said. “Before you knew who was on the Wyoming-CSU swing, the Utah- BYU swing – now you don’t.”
Besides the comfort level of the former scheduling model, the bigger issues are more missed class time for players and added airfare expense.
There also are anomalies, such as CSU playing four of its first five MWC games on the road. But the benefit for coaches and players is more rest between games and more preparation time in the turnaround.
Said UNLV coach Lon Kruger, a relative newcomer in his second season with the Rebels, “I like it a lot better. There’s better preparation time and recovery time. It may pinch on travel plans, but as far as basketball is concerned I love it.”
MWC commissioner Craig Thompson said the missed classes and increased cost are concerns. With a 48-hour turnaround under the old system, he said it became a mind-set to hope for a road split.
For the Utah-BYU and CSU- Wyoming travel partner concept, Thompson said, “We’ll see if there is a way to keep them together and still get the parity you want in this league.”
Lobos love big Box
The new folk hero for New Mexico basketball fans is 6-foot- 8, 250-pound forward Joel Box. He left the team in December dissatisfied with his playing time.
Coach Ritchie McKay has welcomed Box back. Box was 3-for-3 in nine minutes Saturday and drew the loudest ovation of the night when he entered the CSU game and hit a 3-pointer.
Footnotes
Wyoming’s Justin Williams, barely halfway through his second season with the Cowboys, broke his MWC season record of 81 blocked shots when the 6-10 senior swatted away eight against TCU. He has 85 for the season. … In a departure from the tried and true free pizza giveaways to lure students to games, Wyoming is offering $300 in textbooks in a raffle during tonight’s Air Force game. … While Air Force (14-1, 2-0) is soaring with first-year coach Jeff Bzdelik, his two predecessors are struggling on the East Coast. Last year’s coach, Chris Mooney, is 7-7 with Richmond. And at Princeton, second-year coach Joe Scott watched his Tigers (2-10) score only 34 points in a loss to Stanford and 21 points in a loss to Monmouth. They also lost to Division III Carnegie Mellon.
Natalie Meisler can be reached at 303-820-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com.
