Reno hopefully helps gets the wheels turning for Big Sky

It may have not been one of those lights-a-blinking, bells-a-clanging jackpot events.

But the recently concluded Big Sky Conference basketball tournament that ended a six-day run in Reno, Nev. dished out just enough winners to keep ‘em coming back.

That’s the observation of Eastern Washington University athletics director Bill Chaves who saw his two teams lose semifinal games, but for the men, there was a dividend.

Getting to 17 wins, something the Eagles did with a first-round win over Northern Arizona, partly paved the way for Eastern (17-15) to host an opening-round game in the College Basketball Invitational, which they did this past Wednesday versus Pepperdine (18-13). It was Eastern’s first-ever non-Big Sky postseason tournament home game.

“It’s kind of a check in the box for the program,” Chaves said. And a baby step, perhaps, for both Eastern and the Big Sky as both try to gain further respect in the college basketball world.

Eastern has played in CBI preseason tournaments for the past four or five years. “That opened the door to a possible postseason opportunity,” Chaves said.

The CBI knows that if a team is chosen to go to the NCAA or the NIT then they have to keep searching. “For us, our tournament of choice, if it’s not one of those two, is the CBI,” Chaves said.

Eastern is in the bracket with Montana and Nevada with those two also meeting Wednesday in Reno. “Hopefully we’ll figure out how to have a good 40 minutes on Wednesday (versus Pepperdine),” Chaves said, adding Eastern would know if they host a March 21 game.

And speaking of Reno, reaction was as mixed and varied as the people who provided it.

“If it wasn’t a home run it was a bases-loaded double,” Chaves said. “I think the number of things we came out of there having to tweak for next year, that list is fairly lengthy but there’s nothing major.”

As far as the participants themselves and the coaches, Chaves never met one that thought the idea of moving to a neutral site versus playing at the respective homes of conference champions was a bad idea.

“I think they liked the camaraderie, it had an event feel to it,” Chaves said. “I think it’s just going to get better and better.”

Attendance was noticeably spotty in the 7,000-seat Reno Events Center where the men’s title game between Weber State and Montana drew 2,516. The 2015 championship in Missoula between Montana and Eastern drew a season-high 7,026 to Dahlberg Arena.

The participating schools — all 12 conference members — Chaves estimated, accounted for about 90 percent of the gate. “For this to grow it has to be 50-50,” Chaves said.

The tournament grew on the community, Chaves said. “I think year-two will be better than year-one and I think year-three will be better than year-two,” he added.

Reno beat out Spokane, Missoula and others for the three-year deal to host. And the Reno hospitality industry has vowed to be better partners in 2017

“Some of the fear is that you go to a neutral site and your best teams might get upset,” Chaves said. But in Reno, the regular-season’s top teams met with No. 1 Weber topping No. 2 Montana 62-59. “But not on each other’s floor,” Chaves pointed out.

Weber State, a No. 15 seed, faces No. 2 Xavier in St. Louis. That, along with the No. 16-seeded Idaho women facing a No. 1 in Baylor — and the 20-win EWU women being snubbed all together — has a lot of tempers flaring.

But it’s all part of a general lack of respect for the Big Sky Conference. They’ve earned the Rodney Dangerfield badge, but that’s something the conference hopes to combat as the tournament grows.

The Big Sky has never had more than one berth in the NCAA’s, the Big Sky’s director of basketball communications, Jason Ashcraft said in an email. But that’s partly due to limited success once in the event.

In it’s 50-plus year history, Idaho State’s 1977 run to the Elite Eight where the Bengals lost to the University of Nevada Las Vegas 107-90, is the BSC’s one-hit wonder. Idaho reached the Sweet-16 in 1982 losing to Oregon State 60-42.

“When it’s all said and done it comes down to recruiting,” Chaves said. And that was one reason to initiate the conference tournament, he explained.

Finding one more top student-athlete can tip the scale in basketball. And that maybe opens another door to the dance floor.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].