Canzano: Pac-12 trying to see through the Vegas smoke
What happens next year for OSU and WSU?
LAS VEGAS — I watched Oregon State go toe-to-toe with Stanford in a big-time women’s basketball game on Friday night. I walked out of MGM Grand Garden Arena arena alongside a die-hard Beavers fan who made the trip from Corvallis.
Bonnie Osborne is in her 80s. The retired school teacher couldn’t be five feet tall and told me she was a subscriber to this publication. I was carrying a bag containing my laptop in one hand and a hard case filled with equipment for my radio show in the other. I could barely keep up. She was dressed in an orange sweatshirt and darted across the casino floor, past banks of beckoning slot machines, and headed toward the hotel lobby.
“I love my team and coming here,” she told me. “I plan to keep doing this as long as I’m able.”
Two and a half miles away at the Orleans Arena, the West Coast Conference basketball tournament was going on. The fan peeled off in the lobby of the MGM, but my journey took me out the doors to that 9,500-seat venue. I walked in, looked around, and thought to myself: “I hope she likes this place, too.”
It’s where Oregon State and Washington State — men and women — will play next March. Late on Friday night, I sat in a courtside seat beside Stu Jackson, the WCC commissioner, for a spell. I visited with a couple of the conference athletic directors, too, and talked to some assistant coaches for teams that were hanging around.