Big West basketball tournaments are relocating in 2021. Here’s where Cal Poly will play
The Cal Poly men’s and women’s basketball teams will play in the 2021 Big West Conference Championship Tournaments at a new location.
The Big West Conference announced Wednesday that the games will be held at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. Originally, the events were planned for the Honda Center in Anaheim.
The men’s and women’s tournaments are scheduled for March 9 through 13, and are sponsored by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. All games will be shown across WatchESPN’s platforms.
“We are very appreciative of our partners at Honda Center who agreed to allow us to relocate,” Big West Conference commissioner Dan Butterly said in a news release Wednesday. “bdG Sports and MGM Resorts International will provide a bubble-like setting that includes significant proactive measures to mitigate the impact of the virus and safeguard the health and safety of all teams competing.”
The Big West Conference will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation and the possibility of allowing limited crowds at the event, the release said.
An official determination on attendance limits, spectator health and safety protocols and ticket pricing will be made in the near future, according to the conference.
All student-athletes, coaches and staff will be provided daily health screenings and COVID-19 testing in accordance with NCAA recommendations and state and local restrictions, the Big West Conference said.
Competitors will be able to safely walk from their Mandalay Bay hotel rooms to the venue to compete in the championships without outside contact, according to the release.
Additionally, dedicated meeting-room space will be set aside for each team, as well as increased sanitation of shared spaces such as on-site practice facilities, locker rooms, staff rooms, training areas, the basketballs, and media and scorer’s table surfaces.
Team benches will also be split into three appropriately distanced rows, according to the release.
“Mandalay Bay provides the ideal campus in which to create a safe ‘stay-and-play’ environment for all 19 Big West teams,” said Brooks Downing, president and CEO of bdG Sports, the company that has managed NCAA basketball games and tournaments in Las Vegas since 2013. “After running two separate bubbles with success in both Las Vegas and Southwest Florida to start the season, we can implement our best practices as well as the same testing and safety protocols to assist commissioner Butterly and his teams at the Big West Conference in delivering two conference champions in March that are ready to move on to the NCAA Tournament.”
Every team in standings will qualify for each of the tournaments, the release said.
That means Cal Poly men’s and women’s basketball teams will be playing.
Currently, the men’s team is 2-4 in non-conference play after it lost its past two games against the University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount University.
The team will play its next games on Dec. 27 and 28, opening conference play against 2-0 University of Hawaii in Honolulu.
the Cal Poly’s women’s basketball team is 4-2 in non-conference play after it won its last game against San Diego State.
The women’s team opens Big West Conference play on Dec. 27 and 28 against the University of Hawaii in San Luis Obispo.
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 4:23 PM.
