Canzano: View from Las Vegas is rarely uninteresting

Estimated learn time: 4-5
minutes

LAS VEGAS — I bought a tip from a Pac-12 Convention insider a number of years in the past. The supply directed me to do some reporting about the place Commissioner Larry Scott was staying through the 2019 convention basketball tournaments.

Seems Scott had booked himself the Sky Suites two-bedroom Sky Villa at ARIA Resort and On line casino. It has 3,370 sq. ft of area and consists of 24-hour butler service, a marble soaking tub, and a non-public pool.

Nightly charge: $7,500.

Scott was livid that I wrote about it. He known as it a private assault. However it wasn’t. It was an vital and related piece. The commissioner spent lavishly and lived massive. The convention was underfunding its universities and spending an excessive amount of of the hard-earned income on personal planes, lodge suites, and year-end events.

The Pac-12 was on the trail to destruction. That Scott was sipping Veuve Clicquot champagne and nibbling on chocolate-dipped strawberries was tone deaf.

I spent 11 days embedded on The Strip in Las Vegas that yr. I watched school basketball tournaments and filed columns. I tracked Scott and visited with convention athletic administrators and presidents. I additionally discovered lots about concrete employees as “The World of Concrete” conference occurred to be occurring.

(This is what I discovered about concrete: If you are going to maintain a concrete conference, do it in Las Vegas. If you happen to maintain it in Omaha, no person’s coming.)

In the course of the subsequent 10 days, I will cowl the boys’s and girls’s Pac-12 Convention basketball tournaments in Las Vegas. I am working for you now. The ladies go first. I will put up up at MGM Grand Backyard Enviornment for the remainder of this week, reporting and writing. Subsequent week, the boys’s groups will take over T-Cell Enviornment.

Among the many issues I am interested by:

• Will this Pac-12 match have the identical really feel as the top of convention play within the school soccer season? The soccer packages left me wanting extra.

• What do leaders on the departing Pac-12 colleges need to say on their method out?

• What’s the way forward for this occasion? Do Oregon State and Washington State envision a presence in Las Vegas as a part of their rebuild?

• Will George Kliavkoff make good on my request for a sit-down interview? The ex-commissioner advised me in January that he had a narrative to inform. He lives in Las Vegas. I’ve reached out. He is been too quiet for too lengthy. Time for a sit down.

• What’s Oregon State’s ceiling this season in girls’s basketball? The Beavers have depth, and expertise, and are well-coached. Will OSU get previous No. 1-seed Stanford on Friday evening in a possible semifinal thriller?

• What’s Stanford’s Cameron Brink, an Oregon native, taking part in for now? She had 23 rebounds and 25 factors in a outstanding efficiency in opposition to Oregon State through the common season.

• Juju Watkins, a 6-foot-2 star at USC, scored 51 factors in a recreation earlier this season. Is Watkins going to steal the present? I am right here for it.

• Will this girls’s match present one other shock? Washington State shocked the sector final yr. The Cougars upset three ranked groups, reduce down the nets, and carried out snow angels within the confetti on the court docket. It was a enjoyable scene. JohnCanzano.com has a pair of photographers in Las Vegas within the subsequent two weeks. They will be submitting day by day picture galleries that deliver you nearer to the motion.

• How about Oregon’s Dana Altman? Will the coach have any enjoyable subsequent week in Las Vegas? His final three seasons have been marred by accidents and poor crew chemistry. Altman advised reporters this week that he is not retiring. UO must win the match to make the NCAA area. Because the Geese’ coach advised me: “Making the NIT is not our objective.”

• Will Washington State win the boys’s match? Kyle Smith’s crew is among the greatest tales in school basketball. WSU disrupted the Pac-12 common season, knocking Arizona out twice. The Cougars are hungry, proficient, and tall.

The second anniversary of JohnCanzano.com is a number of days away. I am grateful for the early adopters who supported this unbiased endeavor. I am additionally grateful for individuals who have discovered my work extra just lately.

I am working for you now.

I am enthusiastic about the place the following two weeks will take us.

Learn extra of columnist John Canzano completely at JohnCanzano.com.

Most up-to-date John Canzano tales