Game 1: 6 p.m. - No. 8 Portland Pilots vs. No. 9 Santa Clara Broncos (live on WCCsports.com)
Today is the start of the West Coast Conference Tournament in Las Vegas. The winner of this game will go onto face the San Francisco Dons tomorrow evening at 6 PM (BYUtv/ESPN3).
What to know: University of Portland was quite a young team this year, with only one senior and one junior donning the purple Pilots jersey. The result of this class imbalance was a team that struggled to score points the entire year going 3-13 in league play. Most important, two of those wins came against the team they face tonight.
Santa Clara University was expected to be quite a bit better. The team had one of the better guards in the league (and on the west coast) in Kevin Foster who was averaging 17.8 points. Key word here is 'was', because Kevin Foster was suspended for the rest of the year after an arrest stemming from a possible poor life choice. Without Foster, the Broncos just didn't have the firepower to compete with anyone - literally. They went winless in conference play.
Who is going to win: The Pilots already took care of business twice this year, and there is no reason to think that the third time will be any harder. Expect University of Portland to take care of business quite handily, if not in an ugly - very University of Portland basketball fashion.