With Pac-12 Closing Shop, What Next Conference Will Book Basketball Tournament For T-Mobile Arena? How About Big Ten With USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington Joining Conference?
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
The Pac-12’s basketball tournament is leaving T-Mobile Arena after 2024 because the conference is disbanding, so what conference will sign up the arena for a college hoops tournament starting in 2025 and moving forward?
LVSportsBiz.com has heard that the Big Ten — which is expanding to include USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington to become an 18-school powerhouse — might be a candidate to hold its basketball tournament at T-Mobile Arena in 2025 and perhaps the Mountain West Conference after 2025.
The Big Ten has been known to stage its basketball tournament in different sites through the years.
This year’s Big Ten tournament is at the Target Center in Minneapolis after it was held at the United Center in Chicago in 2023, Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis in 2022, Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2021, United Center in Chicago in 2019, Madison Square Garden in New York in 2018 and Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. in 2017.
With USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington being added to the conference, a basketball tournament in Las Vegas could be a nice attraction for the Big Ten’s new West Coast schools while adding a sports destination for winter-tired Big Ten fans from the Midwest in the middle of March.
The Big Ten has not yet picked a site for its basketball tournament in 2025.
Las Vegas is the hub of college basketball tourneys in March with the West Coast, Western Athletic, Mountain West and Big West staging its annual March Madness hoops events in Sin City.
T-Mobile Arena is an attractive high-profile venue and the Big Ten could show college basketball that its league is a national conference if it picks Las Vegas and T-Mobile Arena as a tourney host for 2025.
The Mountain West Conference’s final year of its current deal at Thomas & Mack Center is 2025, so the Mountain West might make a run at holding its tournament event at T-Mobile Arena after 2025. Mountain West, as part of its due diligence, will take a look.
And in other college basketball tournament news, look for the West Coast Conference to eventually move from Orleans Arena to Mandalay Bay’s Michelob Ultra Arena. The year is unknown.
