Analysis

Road to Reno: Q&A with BSC Deputy Commissioner Ron Loghry – Part 1

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Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a two-part question and answer series with Big Sky Conference deputy commissioner Ron Loghry discussing the centralization of the Big Sky basketball tournament at a neutral site.

In an effort to ease fiscal concerns for athletic departments and basketball fans alike, the Big Sky Conference elected to centralize and combine its annual postseason tournament. Of the 32 major Division I basketball conferences, only six leagues give the hosting rights for conference tournament to the regular-season champions.

In April, after a year of consideration, the Big Sky chose Reno, Nevada for its new week-long 24-team tournament the second week of March. The university presidents of the 12 full-time Big Sky schools chose the Biggest Little City in the World over a group of potential suitors that included Billings, Missoula, Spokane and Ogden.

IMG_0046 copy“This was an exhaustive process,” Big Sky commissioner Doug Fullerton said in a statement. “Reno, as a city and the folks that we worked with did a spectacular job in representing their community. We’re extremely excited about going to Reno for our championships.

“One thing that always impressed me about the community is it’s a lot like the communities we have in the Big Sky. It’s a very similar feel. I know we’re going to be welcomed. The coaches and the fans attending are going to feel very good about coming to Reno.”

The American East, the Atlantic Sun, the Horizon, the Northeast and the Patriot League all have campus site tournaments. The Ivy League does not have a postseason tournament with its regular season champion earning the league’s auto bid to the NCAA tournament.

Turning the tournament into an event was a primary factor in the decision to centralize the event and meld the men’s and women’s tournaments together. Fullerton, deputy commissioner Ron Loghry and the Big Sky wanted to make the tournament a more affordable event while increasing the post-season experience for all 24 teams in the league. The league weighed a multitude of other details before signing a three-year deal with the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority for the first all-inclusive, 6-day Big Sky Basketball tournament the second week of March.

In mid-December, Loghry granted Skyline Sports a long interview to discuss the deciding factors in moving the tournament to a single site.

Skyline Sports: When did the idea of centralizing the postseason tournaments for basketball first come to the forefront and why did you think it was so necessary?

Loghry: “Well, it started I’m going to guess about five years ago. We were really trying to think of some ways to improve basketball in the conference. So we put together an ad hoc committee of athletic directors and senior women administrators and we started having calls and conversations. Out of that, you probably remember, we tried an RPI manipulation and that had come out kind of as a directive and they didn’t feel it worked so we only did it one year.

“They went back and said, ‘What are some things we can control: Our RPI, how we get seeded in the tournament, all that kind of thing is really up to a lot of other people. But we can control our postseason. And that was really followed up from the coaches that the postseason is just something they couldn’t develop a following on. They kind of got it painted as they were just asking for the centralized tournament to save their jobs so they could all be included in the tournament or something like that.

Former EWU guard Tyler Harvey

Former EWU guard Tyler Harvey

“But when you sit down with the coaches, which this committee did, we understand, if I’m terrible, I’m not going to save my job. If I’m a terrible coach or we aren’t any good and we are the 12-seed, I’m not going to keep my job. But the coaches said they weren’t gaining any traction with their fans because they couldn’t develop a following. Almost always, the tournament site wasn’t determined until the last week or two of the season and most people couldn’t go to the tournament on last-second notice. You couldn’t find flights, you couldn’t get rooms. We had parents missed their kids last games because it’s somewhere they couldn’t get to.

“They took another run at developing this postseason neutral predetermined site and they had always been stiff armed. But there was enough momentum built, the case was made in front of the presidents, could we try it, could we sent out an RFP and see what we get back.

“Another thing that happened along that line was the University of Idaho rejoined the league in 2014. Now we have 12 teams and we are not playing a double round-robin schedule. So we are playing this 18-game unbalanced schedule is about the best way to say it. You are not playing everybody twice. It’s 18 games instead of 20 or 22. Now we are eliminating people from the postseason when they haven’t played everybody an equal amount of times. That became troublesome to the administrators, obviously with coaches. That played into it. There were just a lot of things.

“Everything kind of came to a head or a perfect storm developed where the presidents said we need to look at this. We added in successive years…North Dakota won the women’s regular season and we had to get teams to Grand Forks. We had teams taking 18-hour bus rides, two, three days to get there, plus that to get back after they were eliminated.

“Both tournaments ended up in Missoula last year and this was even after we had the process started. But it highlighted the issues we had. We had eight teams in the tournament so you are bringing seven visiting teams on each side, 14 teams total to find hotel rooms in Missoula. And Missoula is one of our more fan friendly and bigger places with hotel accommodations. Try that in Pocatello. Here in Ogden (where the Big Sky offices are located) most of the teams would be in Salt Lake City. That was one of the factors and just getting to where you needed to be. The cost of getting somewhere on a last week’s notice because it almost always turns out that way. Very rarely in our league have we had two to three weeks to develop our site, get it all situated. We are always coming down to the last minute.

“That all played in and the coaches made a very compelling argument to the president and the administrators that there were no rivalries being developed in our league. The coach at Sacramento State, Brian Katz, said to me that, ‘I go in to North Dakota once a year. What do they know about Sac State? We could be Bemidji State as far as they are concerned. We need something to develop rivalries in this league in basketball where our fans come together at a central location and maybe have a tough game against North Dakota where fans are there rooting us on. And then maybe next time we are in Grand Forks, it means something. They’ve seen us, they competed against us.’”

“It was a very compelling argument he had. And they saw the way we did the tournament only really served to promote two or three or our top programs. It just cycled through who was hosting all the time. You get to host, that propels your program forward and it’s just a vicious cycle where a lot of teams could never get involved. That was really the beginning of it. It bubbled up from different areas, the president said ok, we sent out the RFPs and started looking for a place to go.”

The first men’s Big Sky Tournament was played in Ogden in 1976. The Dee Events Center on the Weber State campus has hosted 14 total Big Sky Tournaments over the last 40 years, including 12 on the men’s side. Missoula has hosted the men’s Big Sky Tournament seven times and has hosted the women’s championship 21 times since 1983. Northern Arizona has played host to four men’s tournaments in Flagstaff since 1976 but no women’s tournaments. Bozeman has hosted the men’s tournament three times and one women’s tournament. Pocatello has hosted three women’s tournaments and one men’s. No other Big Sky town or school has hosted more than two tournaments over the last 40 years.

University of Montana women's basketball team hoisting the 2014 BSC championship trophy

University of Montana women’s basketball team hoisting the 2014 BSC championship trophy

Reno has hosted the tournament (1983, 1986), before the Wolfpack moved to the Big West in 1992. Boise State hosted four men’s and a women’s tournament before leaving the league in 1996. Idaho hosted three men’s tournaments in Moscow and one women’s tournament before leaving that same year.

Since 1976, Montana and Weber State have claimed nine men’s tournament championships each. Boise State and Idaho each won the Big Sky four times, while Nevada won it twice. Of current Big Sky members, Idaho State, NAU, Montana State, Portland State and Eastern Washington have each claimed two Big Sky Tournament titles.

The Lady Griz have claimed 21 of the first 33 Big Sky Tournament titles. Idaho State has claimed three berths to the Big Dance and Weber State has two. No other team has advanced to the NCAA tournament more than once since the league first added women’s basketball in 1983.

Skyline: Did you receive any resistance from some of the schools who have been traditional powers? Montana is a key example. They have hosted on both sides so often in the last 20 or 30 years. Did they offer any resistance for this idea?

Loghry: “The only resistance was just saying that this is really hard for us to do because we feel like we would host it quite often. Weber State, their AD said the same thing. To (Montana AD) Kent (Haslam) and (Weber State AD) Jerry Bovee’s credit, they both said the same thing: this is the best thing for the conference. This is what we need to do to make basketball better. We need to develop a site or an event where our fans can all go to, not just a home crowd.

“The resistance from them…the presidents, at the presidential level, they expressed the same thing. They really enjoy hosting, thought it was a great thing. The fans enjoyed it. But they both said they would like to give this a try. The resistance wasn’t strong. But they wanted it stressed and noted in the minutes because of their history of hosting a lot.”

Skyline: The Big Sky has had problems on the national level, particularly on the men’s side when they get to the national tournament. Was there any conversations had about that maybe this sets up a team that might not be the league’s best team to represent? Maybe Montana wins it and goes to the tournament with a 13 but what if Montana State gets the 7-seed in the Big Sky and they make a run into the tournament and go and get a 15 or 16 in the tournament and have even less of a chance. Was that discussed?

Loghry: “Oh yeah. We had a lot of that discussion. When we talked about how we were going to bracket it, what byes we were going to get. We will give our top four seeds first round byes. We will set the game schedule up so it’s best for them. There’s that fear but there’s also that philosophy out there that maybe that is your best team. You want the team that is playing best at that time to move forward. If you get that team moving forward, it’s going to be awhile but the other thought is if that happens, what if we become that league where you almost wish for an upset because then your top team gets in too.

Weber State men's basketball coach Randy Rahe

Weber State men’s basketball coach Randy Rahe

“Again, we are not doing it for that right now. We know we are a long ways from that happening, from getting two teams in the NCAA. But they looked at a situation like the Big West. With Cal Poly being one of our conference brethren in football. They go through, they win their tournament, they get a win and they almost got a second win. You had the team playing the best at the time and Cal Poly’s situation when we talked to them, they had two guys down in the middle of the year. They couldn’t win a game. They didn’t come out of nowhere and win that tournament. They were a really, really good team that got their guys back, came into the Big West Tournament and won some games.

“You can’t say that doesn’t happen in our league some years. Or a team gets out in front, gets a nice cushion built and they just aren’t playing well but they still host. There are both ways to look at it. There is and there was that fear, definitely.”

Two seasons ago, Cal Poly started 4-1 in Big West play before injuries caused the Mustangs to lose nine of their final 11 games of the regular season. The Mustangs ripped off three straight wins to claim the Big West’s auto bid into the Big Dance. Cal Poly posted an 81-69 win over Texas Southern in the First Four to play into the Round of 64. The Mustangs lost 64-37 to second-seeded Wichita State.

Skyline Sports: The Big Sky is such a strong football league and the map of the football landscape has grown so much in recent years with the expansion and the TV contract. Did you feel like it was necessary to give basketball a shot in the arm?

Over the last four years, the Big Sky’s football handprint has expanded significantly. The league added Cal Poly and UC Davis as football-only affiliates and North Dakota and Southern Utah as full-time members in 2012. Idaho rejoined as a full-time member aside from football (the Vandals are in the FBS Sun Belt Conference) in 2014, bringing the league to 12 full-time members.

The league signed a contract with ROOT Sports to replace Pac 12 games on the regional network. The Pac 12 is still the dominant team in the region on a national level with the Mountain West gaining ground. But the Big Sky has positioned itself as the most expansive FCS league in the West and the home to almost all the FCS schools west of the Mississippi in a 121-team division stacked with teams from the Eastern and Central Time Zones.

Loghry: “Definitely. And that’s why that committee was formed was to look at how to approve, I’ll say basketball but it was how to improve men’s basketball, get a win or two, a better seed in the NCAAs, national wins. I would never discount, we are good in football, a national contender in the FCS. But you need the NCAA basketball tournament because that is where the money is.

Schools that make it to the first round of the NCAA Tournament and lose receive $82,000. The NCAA maintains a fund for basketball and compensates conferences based on units ammased over the previous six years. Unit values are derived from total the NCAA men’s basketball purse.

CAUdSztUIAA96aZ.jpg_largePer a report by Winthrop Intelligence, (see here) as recently as 2014, the per unit price stood at $245,514. Schools can make as much as $1.95 million on a given tournament, money that can be used to cover any cost the university chooses once secured.

Over the last six years, the Big Ten, the Big East and the Atlantic 10 have received more than $20 million to be distributed among its schools. The Pac 12, the ACC and the Big 12 all made at least $13 million, while the Mountain West, the SEC, the Missouri Valley all made 1at least $10 million. The West Coast and the Atlantic Sun each made at least $5 million. The Big Sky is among a group of 15 conferences that receive the minimum of $1.525 million.

The 12 most valuable teams in the country by units: Kansas, Louisville, Syracuse, Ohio State, Florida, Michigan State, Duke, North Carolina, Marquette, Kentucky, Butler and VCU.

12. seed Montana defeated 5. seed Nevada in 2006, the last time a Big Sky team won a game in the NCAA Tournament.

 Loghry: “If you get a share in the basketball championships, if you get a couple of shares in the basketball championships, that helps the conference and then you can start building something. Then the NCAA money that comes in can be used for television. It can be used for festivities, upgrading the championship. You can look real closely at the West Coast Conference as a model of what happens if you can get a little bit of national recognition.

“They did it with one team (Gonzaga) playing really good, getting this national following, doing well in the tournament and it raised all the teams up. They don’t have football and we understand that. But that’s really the goal: the make our basketball programs viable in this region and get scheduling, be strong enough that you get the schedules filled with the conferences around us.”

Skyline: Do you think there’s a blue print out there to follow? Do you have a trailblazer, a Gonzaga so to speak?

Loghry: “I don’t think at this time we do. I don’t think anybody has pegged a team in our conference that is just far and away better than everyone else and everyone has to rise up. I think that was really the reason why this tournament bubbled up so well. There is so much parity in our conference that we were leaving out teams in our conference that were fighting for that eight seed and maybe were playing really good basketball. Even one or two games would’ve helped their program. So to leave them home really hurt them. It hurt their program, their fan base, their drive to create something in their hometowns and the teams in our league.

“We took more of a broad approach to that. There is parity here and we need everybody to be served by a championship and then let’s see what comes out of that.”

Skyline Sports: When you were thinking about the potential host sites, was there any thoughts put into not returning to the norm? To not going back to Missoula or Ogden? What was the determining factor for the sites you chose initially to make a run at hosting?

Loghry: “The ultimate decision to pick Reno was based on factors which were: Reno is the only site that bid on both championships to be played in the same facility, which is a neutral facility. Any other location we looked at, for example Spokane, would have the men’s championship in the Spokane Arena and the women’s championship on Eastern Washington’s home court until he championship game and then they would come up and play at the Spokane Arena.

MSU head men's basketball coach Brian Fish

MSU head men’s basketball coach Brian Fish

Similarly to out at Northern Colorado and the bid Loveland did on it, they had the men in the Budweiser Center and the women would’ve been in Northern Colorado. There was a clear disparity. That would’ve been a hard sell to the committee, for the men to be predetermined neutral and the women be pre determined non-neutral.

“So we eliminated those. The University of Montana bid on just the women’s championship and Weber State bid on just the men’s championship. There was an overwhelming feeling based on what we had just been through in Missoula hosting both — and it happened in Missoula two or three years previously (2013) where they hosted both — and there was a great synergy created with having the men’s and women’s championships together. That really was at the forefront.

“Billings put in a great bid. They hosted us well. You went up there and you could really see that they were trying hard. They put up a great effort. Again, it came down to it would’ve been just the men’s championship and right in Montana, Montana State’s backyard. We know Billings is removed from the two but the rest of the league saw it as we’d be going right into Montana, the predominant fan would be a Grizzly or a Bobcat fan. It came down to those factors but not just by default.

“Reno is a great setting. One of the things we talked about with the committee was creating an event where the fans would intermingle with each other. You can take a tournament somewhere and here’s the arena and the hotels are scattered somewhere but we wanted to try to find a setting where I see you walking down in the lobby but I’m an opponent and it creates an event feeling. When you get to Reno, it’s amazing that facility we are in with the El Dorado Silver Legacy and Circus Circus, it’s like you are in one facility with one to the next to the next. We are a block away from the arena where the tournament is taking place. It could not be created in any other place we looked at. That was a no-brainer.”

Skyline: Why did you think it was critical to have men’s and womens at the same spot?

Loghry: “If we picked a men’s site, any of the men’s sites, Billings, Reno — Reno would’ve hoped the men if we would’ve asked them to — but Billings, Reno, Ogden, the women by default would’ve went to our institutions. There was no neutral place bid on them independently from the men’s and Reno was it.

But I think moreover was the fact that we need to teach our fans how to travel first, give them the opportunity to travel somewhere to know where they are going and know their team is in. This is a three-year agreement and the committee put it out there, let’s do this three years creating an event for both sets of fans. Some schools, it’s the same fans. But for our larger supported women’s program, they are not. The University of Montana, that’s an entirely different fan base. Create an event and let both of them feed off each other and then we will see in three years if there is a reason to separate them? Does this work well to keep them together? This is the blue print we wanted to use based on the blue print we have seen in Missoula. The administrators and teams expressed they really liked it.”

Skyline: What was the reaction of some of the coaches for the argument of diminishing the meaning of the regular season?

Loghry: “That was one of the things the coaches scoffed at was you cannot diminish the regular season. If I’m a coach and I can’t keep my student-athletes involved up until the last game, then I’m a really, really bad coach. So I shouldn’t need the chance of making a tournament…I will get them ready, we will be ready for that championship regardless of our record. They did not see it at all, none of the coaches did and the administrators listened to them that it doesn’t diminish the regular season. In fact, now you are fighting for days off. You get a top four seed, now you can sit and wait and see who’s coming down. They did not feel that way at all.”

Skyline: Coach (Brian Fish) here in Bozeman always argues the opposite. If all teams don’t qualify for the tournament, then it sets up games that don’t mean anything. Last year, Montana State played Montana and it meant something for the Griz but nothing for the ‘Cats other than the ability to play spoiler to their rival. MSU’s last three games meant nothing as they were already eliminated.

Loghry: “We’ve preached it in the past when we had our old format that battle for that last spot. It keeps the media involved and some of the teams involved. But we just heard enough of the opposite but that’s fine, but just as Coach Fish said, if I’m not fighting that last spot, I really have to keep my team involved. In his situation, he had the Cat-Griz game and it almost didn’t mean anything to his players where as they could have made life very miserable for Montana in that situation.

Skyline: Aside from the event nature of it and Reno has some other stuff going on too, what else made Reno standout as far as why you chose to go there?

Loghry: “Other history. They have hosted conference championships in the past. The Big West was there. The Western Athletic Conference was there. Whatever conference Nevada happened to be in at the time I guess. The people we are working with are the same people that worked with those conferences. The Reno Tahoe convention bureau athletic side have been there for more than 20 years. They are really excited. They actually got involved because they had a group of Reno citizens come to them when they heard this was open for bid when they heard this was open for bid. They said ‘Our fans, we know Big Sky. We have an affinity to those teams. We remember Montana coming to town, Montana State or Weber State. Those are the teams we remember. They had a group of citizens come and tell them to get the ball rolling.

IMG_2099 copy“But they are really great to work with in the history of having done it, the property I mentioned before and their willingness to do what we need to do. What do we need is what they ask. How do we make this work? The Reno people along with the two hotel properties are going to two different locations throughout the season are doing Reno nights. They are coming on campus to promote this event. It goes back to when we first started this process, everyone said ‘Let’s go to Vegas where some of the other conferences are.’

“A group of us went down to Vegas and toured the South Point. It was simply, ‘Here’s how much the rent would be. We will help you, advertise it for you. We were just going to be another group down there. We weren’t the Pac 12 or the Mountain West. They weren’t going to bend over and give us money to come there.

“That’s when the committee kind of back tracked and said let’s send out our RFP and find a place that wants us rather than a place we can go to play. Reno came through with flying colors. They really want us there. They want to work at having this event be a showcase event in that location.”

Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.

About Colter Nuanez

Colter Nuanez is the co-founder and senior writer for Skyline Sports. After spending six years in the newspaper industry with stops at the Missoulian, the Ellensburg Daily Record and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the former Washington Newspaper Association Sportswriter of the Year and University of Montana Journalism School graduate ('09) has cultivated a deep passion for sports journalism during his 13-year career covering the Big Sky Conference. In August of 2014, Colter and brother Brooks merged their passions of writing and art to found Skyline Sports.

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