For Star subscribers: No matter what the ACC boasts about its Brooklyn tournament, or how smug the Big Ten feels about playing its tournament in downtown Indianapolis, Vegas is the place to be.
Greg Hansen An all-sessions pass for the Pac-12 Tournament is $1,100. Get one while they last. That’s four days of basketball at the $375 million T-Mobile Arena, which is maybe 300 yards off the Las Vegas Strip.
A step slow, the conference long struggled to find a suitable home for its basketball tournament. There were three problems in the ’80s and ’90s: location, location, location. The Pac-12 moved ahead with its basketball tournament, but its original plan to play at neutral venues in big population centers went poof.
When Hazzard and the Bruins showed up for a Friday night semifinal game against underdog Washington State, the McKale Center crowd of 13,436 rooted for the Cougars with a fervor usually reserved for the Wildcats. Hazzard, whose sideline demeanor was something out of the Sean Miller playbook, was loudly booed, start to finish.