Western Athletic Conference
March 10-12. All games at Las Vegas.
kPOY: Pascal Siakam, New Mexico State.

The WAC tournament gets underway Thursday with three quarterfinal games at the Orleans Arena.

The WAC showed signs of life this season. While New Mexico State continued a tradition of playing well in the current configuration of the conference, there’s more to the story this season. Cal State Bakersfield and Grand Canyon emerged as legitimate threats to the Aggies’ supremacy. Despite getting swept by the Aggies and finishing two games behind them, Bakersfield enters the tournament rated just slightly better. And while New Mexico State gets a bye to the semifinals by virtue of its regular-season crown, Bakersfield gets to participate in a glorified scrimmage against 0-14 Chicago State. GCU isn’t even here because they are still making the transition to Division-I and thus ineligible for the NCAA tournament. (Though, the Lopes will be appearing in the CIT.)

The smallest tournament in the land is basically a two-team affair and whichever team wins the title will have the ability to hang with a sleeping two-seed.

                        Semis Final Champ
 2 Cal St. Bakersfield   96.1  86.0  49.5
 1 New Mexico St.         100  82.0  44.1
 5 UMKC                  57.5  11.4   2.8
 3 Seattle               71.5  10.9   2.0
 4 Utah Valley           42.5   6.6   1.4
 6 UT Rio Grande Valley  28.5   2.1   0.2
 7 Chicago St.            3.9   1.0   0.07

WAC tourney records (since 1999)

New Mexico St.      22- 4
Cal St. Bakersfield  2- 2
Seattle              2- 3
UMKC                 1- 2
Utah Valley          1- 2
Chicago St.          0- 2
UT Rio Grande Valley 0- 2