College Basketball

During its 51-year existence, the Western Athletic Conference has been no stranger to upheaval.

The conference underwent a seismic shift in 1999 when the Mountain West Conference was formed and was gutted again during the most recent wave of realignment, losing seven of its 10 current members for the 2013-14 season.

Now, the onetime home of UNLV’s athletic programs is searching for stability and, potentially, a new host city for its postseason basketball tournaments.

The WAC tournament tipped off Tuesday, and with attendance lagging at Orleans Arena and the conference’s footprint beginning to spread east, it is uncertain whether the event will return to Las Vegas for the fourth straight year.

“We haven’t made that decision,” interim commissioner Jeff Hurd said. “We will have a meeting or a call with our administrators probably after the first week of the NCAA Tournament … and we’ll have a discussion.”

The WAC originally signed a two-year contract to hold its men’s and women’s tournaments at Orleans Arena and extended the agreement for 2013. The event drew an average of 3,518 fans for the four sessions in 2011, but attendance dipped to an average of 1,870 last year. The 2012 title game between New Mexico State and Louisiana Tech drew 1,405 fans.

“We haven’t had the success in the three years that we’ve been here that we would like to have had,” Hurd said, “but I still believe from a neutral-court standpoint, from a destination standpoint … the Orleans Arena and the hotel setup for us is perfect.

“The question becomes, can you do it financially? Can you pay the rent and sell enough tickets to make it financially feasible to remain here? That’s the question, and that’s a question that our members are going to have to answer.”

Five of the conference’s members are playing in their first WAC tournament this week, and for four of them, it also will be their last. Denver, which tied for the men’s regular-season title, is headed to the Summit League after this season. Texas-San Antonio is off to Conference USA, while Texas-Arlington and Texas State will join the Sun Belt.

Also, Louisiana Tech is bolting for Conference USA, and San Jose State and Utah State are moving to the Mountain West.

In order to maintain its automatic qualifying berth for the NCAA basketball tournaments — leagues need seven members for AQ status — the WAC will add three schools from the Great West Conference (Chicago State, Texas-Pan American and Utah Valley) along with Grand Canyon, a for-profit Division II school whose commercials air locally during reruns of “The Big Bang Theory,” Cal State-Bakersfield and Missouri-Kansas City. They will join holdovers New Mexico State, Seattle and Idaho, which is set to join the Big Sky beginning in 2014-15.

“I always thought (the WAC) was the best fit for us,” Utah Valley athletic director Michael Jacobsen said. “It’s been my No. 1 priority for a long time. There’s a lot of great programs in the WAC going forward, and we have the opportunity to be very competitive.”

Hurd said one of the agreements the conference made with UMKC is that it will be given the opportunity to host the WAC basketball tournaments, although he added the school will not be ready to do so in 2014. Cal State-Bakersfield athletic director Jeff Konya said he is a “huge proponent” of the event staying in Vegas, at least for the near future.

“It’s a statement when a conference is associated with a city that is putting on several tournaments during championship week,” Konya said. “There’s a lot of value associated with that kind of environment.”

Hurd would like to add two more schools to put the WAC at 10 members for the 2014-15 season in order to withstand any further realignment and said he has had preliminary discussions with a number of schools. The conference, which no longer will sponsor football and added men’s soccer in its place, is using the West Coast Conference and Big West Conference as models going forward.

“We’ll be in a good situation no matter how the conference shakes out,” New Mexico State men’s basketball coach Marvin Menzies said. “I trust the judgment of our leadership.”

Contact reporter David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidSchoenLVRJ.