Posted on: Friday, October 17, 2003
WAC's future talk of town
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| • | UH still has outside shot at hoops title |
| • | Veteran Goo relying on youth |
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
DALLAS — The Western Athletic Conference brought out its brightest stars, assembled its most glib coaches and unfurled its banner to launch the season with its Basketball Media Preview.
And, all anybody wanted to talk about was which schools might be leaving or arriving.
What talk there was about this basketball season was mostly whether it would be the last one for the 10-team WAC as we know it.
Nothing like holding a welcoming party and having guests arrive to headlines heralding the possibility of the host (Southern Methodist) making a run for it.
With Conference USA this week having authorized its commissioner to negotiate with SMU, Rice and Tulsa about changing addresses, it is what WAC commissioner Karl Benson termed the "tug-o-war" between conferences that occupies the spotlight into next month, not the upcoming hoops season.
In the wake of the Atlantic Coast Conference pillaging Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College from the Big East and the Big East in turn romancing Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette and DePaul of Conference USA, it has become a game of musical conferences.
While the WAC tries to entice Tulane, Houston and Texas Christian of C-USA to join with Rice, Tulsa and SMU in an eastern division, C-USA is soliciting Rice, SMU and Tulsa to join up with Tulane, Houston and TCU in its lodge.
Meanwhile, the Mountain West Conference continues to kick around its own expansion possibilities that might or might not include a bite out of the WAC.
So, as much as the assembled coaches wanted to talk about their teams, they also mulled scenarios of what the WAC might look like in 2005.
One, a 12-team, two-division conference with the current membership plus Houston and Tulane, made for less travel and an appealing future all around.
Another — minus Rice, Tulsa and SMU, and the addition of New Mexico State, Utah State and Idaho — sounded depressingly like a morphing into the Big Sky.
"Going back up in the corner (of Utah to Utah State) wouldn't be much fun," said UH coach Riley Wallace, who endured 20 years of snow treks to Utah and Brigham Young and very few road victories there in the old WAC.
Indeed, except for the Rice, SMU and Tulsa coaches who were predictably diplomatic, most coaches seemed to favor the status quo. Even the players, while acknowledging it would be nice to form closer-to-home rivalries, said the current alignment had its pluses.
"I'd hate to see the end of our rivalry with Hawai'i," said Tulsa guard Jason Parker.
"It would be weird to suddenly not be playing all these schools," said UH's Michael Kuebler.
Not any more weird, perhaps, than a basketball preview day where much of the talk was about something other than the upcoming season.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
