Big West Tournaments Face Major Changes : Basketball: New formats and sites could be approved by the conference this month.

The Big West Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments likely will have a new home and a new format for 1996 and the changes could be approved as soon as this month, Rob Halvaks, the conference’s associate commissioner, said Friday.

The 10-team conference is expected to move the tournaments from the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, where attendance has been disappointing in the two seasons that UNLV has been host.

What’s more, the men’s tournament probably will be made up of six teams instead of the current 10-team format. That could hurt the chances of such teams as Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine, second division teams in recent seasons.

“Obviously, the 10-team format has been beneficial to us,” said Irvine Athletic Director Dan Guerrero, who said he favors the change.

In 1994, the 10th-seeded Anteaters reached the final before losing to top-seeded New Mexico State. At the time, it raised questions about getting more than only the conference’s automatic qualifier into the NCAA tournament. Had Irvine (10-20 in 1993-94) defeated New Mexico State (23-8), it was possible only the Anteaters would have gotten a bid.

“The athletic directors agreed that having a low seed advance to the NCAA tournament might not be in the best interest of the Big West Conference,” Guerrero said.

Bids to play host to the ’96 tournament are due by next Friday. Long Beach State, Nevada and Utah State have expressed interest. UNLV, playing its last season in the Big West before moving to the Western Athletic Conference in the fall of 1996, has no plans to submit a bid. Officials of the 18,500-seat Thomas & Mack remain interested in playing host to the event, however.

It’s doubtful the tournaments would move to The Pond of Anaheim, according to John Nicoletti, a spokesman for the arena. The Pond has a three-year contract to play host to the Southern Section and State Regional basketball playoffs and “they fall at roughly the same time as the Big West,” Nicoletti said.

Economics is the primary reason conference officials are looking to leave Las Vegas, Halvaks said. The past two years, UNLV has asked scholarship donors to purchase $240,000 in tickets up front, ensuring at least 8,000 tickets sold for each session.

But when UNLV dropped the requirement for the upcoming tournament and announced it was joining San Jose State in moving to the WAC, other conference athletic directors began considering a change of venue.

“I don’t believe we should be in Vegas next year,” said Dave O’Brien, Long Beach State athletic director. “Once [UNLV] made the decision to go to the WAC, obviously there was no future between Vegas and the Big West.”

O’Brien will meet Monday with Long Beach city officials to discuss how best to submit the 49ers’ bid. Long Beach State could play host to the tournaments at the 5,000-seat Pyramid, which O’Brien said could be expanded to 8,000, or at the 12,500-seat Long Beach Arena, the site from 1989-93.

When the Big West moved to Las Vegas, it was hoped the Runnin’ Rebel men’s basketball team would draw from its followers in Las Vegas and also attract tourists from Big West cities and elsewhere. But that didn’t happen, in part because of UNLV’s tumble from the top of the conference the last two years.