Basketball Tournament

The Pac-12 Conference has scheduled a news conference at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Tuesday to announce that the league's men's basketball tournament will be moving there next March. The men's tournament has been staged at Staples Center since 2002, but its agreement to play there ended this year. Las Vegas will now be home to four conference tournaments. The West Coast and Western Athletic conferences play their tournaments back-to-back at the Orleans Arena. The Mountain West plays at the Thomas & Mack Center on the Nevada Las Vegas campus.

Long Beach State and New Mexico are staking out themes as they head toward their NCAA men's basketball tournament second-round game Thursday in Portland, Ore. New Mexico has some anger going. Just ask any Lobos player. "We're mad at someone," guard Kendall Williams told reporters Sunday. "Oh my gosh, we're mad at someone. I don't know who it is yet. " Long Beach is the team with the agenda. "It doesn't stop here," 49ers forward Eugene Phelps said. "We've got bigger plans than to get here and lose in the first round.

The Pac-12 Conference is expected to move its basketball tournament to Las Vegas next season, something UCLA Coach Ben Howland said could improve the event. “Las Vegas is a big draw,” Howland said. “There are a lot things to do there other than basketball. If that's where the Pac-12 ends up going, it will definitely make sense. It's cheap to get there and the rooms are very reasonable.” Attendance for the tournament has lagged at Staples Center. The Pac-12 reportedly has reached an agreement to move its tournament to the MGM Garden.

For Stanford, the Pacific Life Pac-12 Conference women's basketball tournament is once again a dress rehearsal for the big dance later this month. The tournament atmosphere, with its neutral site — Galen Center for the first two rounds beginning Wednesday, Staples Center for the final two — and its lose-and-you're-done format, will help prepare the No. 2-ranked Cardinal for the NCAA tournament, which begins March 17 and for which it will probably...

Writers from around Tribune Co. discuss some of the major conference basketball tournaments, including those of the ACC, SEC, Big East, Big Ten and Pac-12. Check back throughout the day for more responses and join the discussion with a comment of your own. Shannon Ryan, Chicago Tribune Don't expect many surprises in the SEC. Kentucky will keep rolling over conference opponents as if it's still the regular season. The Big East is always filled with surprises, and this season's big winner will be Marquette, which already beat Louisville and Georgetown this season.

March Madness is going over the top. Turner Broadcasting, which along with CBS Corp. shares the rights for the annual NCAA college basketball tournament, is going to offer its coverage of the event over the Internet for $3.99. The 64-team NCAA tournament runs about a month and ends in early April. The championship game often draws more than 20 million viewers. Previously, people could watch games for free on the NCAA website, but not anymore. Games that CBS carries will remain available for free online.

High school point guards are not usually 6 feet 5, but that's one advantage for sophomore Bryan Alberts of Sun Valley Village Christian, and he showed Friday night why he is headed for big-time status. With his team in need of leadership, Alberts took charge in the fourth quarter, scoring nine of his game-high 18 points and helping the Crusaders defeat previously unbeaten Pasadena Muir, 58-47, in the championship game of the La Salle/Temple City tournament. Alberts, who transferred from Chatsworth Sierra Canyon, was selected the tournament's most valuable player.

Izeah Bowman sensed the ghosts of Alcatraz as the ferry delivered him to the island in the San Francisco Bay. An "eerie energy," he called it. He'd never been to a prison before and certainly never to Alcatraz, once the final stop for the nation's most-wanted murderers, mobsters and criminals. "You felt this presence of lives being taken," said Bowman, an Inglewood native and a grade school teacher in Gardena. Last September, Bowman, a 6-foot-4, 205-pound guard, and 63 others from the West Coast visited the closed federal prison to play basketball in an inaugural one-on-one, single-elimination, one-day tournament for a chance to win $10,000.

Is it too early to get excited about a high school basketball game? Los Angeles Fairfax Coach Harvey Kitani on Tuesday announced the matchups for the Fairfax State Preview Classic set for Jan. 28, and there are two games that should produce much intrigue and big interest. At 4:30 p.m., Los Angeles Price will face Los Angeles Windward in a game between two of the state's top small-school programs. At 8 p.m., there could be three-point shots en masse when Orange Lutheran and Arizona-bound guard Gabe York take on Los Angeles Loyola and its numerous top guards in the featured game of the night.

Reporting from Las Vegas — The winks, nods and thumbs up from college coaches started from practically the opening tip of Stefan Moody's first game. The diminutive point guard would race down the court in a blur, his dreadlocks flapping in the air as he finished a fastbreak with a monstrous two-handed dunk that seemed impossible for a player of his size or stature on the club basketball circuit. Particularly since he had none. Moody was an unknown to major-college coaches only four days ago, just another name in an inch-thick packet of nearly 500 teams participating in the Las Vegas Fab 48 tournament.