C-USA Wrap Up: What Are Fans Saying And What’s Next For The Sun City?

It was a nail-biter of a basketball game for the UTEP Miners at the Conference USA championship Saturday morning.

The Memphis Tigers pulled out a one-point victory after UTEP’s Christian Polk’s jumper shot fell short at the last second.

The final score? 67-66.

“I feel disappointed because we had ’em! We had ’em!” said one Miners fan outside the game. Other El Pasoans felt the same way. “The free throws killed us,” Martin Munoz told ABC-7.

Still, some die-hard fans showed their unwavering support for the home team as they asked for autographs from the players.

After all, there’s still a lot to celebrate. “We were a great host city (for the tournament),” said one fan. “We had some great people do some great work to take care of the people that came into town. The hotels, the restaurants, the service that we provided for them,” said another fan.

UTEP Senior Associate Athletic Director Brian Wickstrom agrees, “We got great reviews from all the conference officials and the visiting teams,” he told ABC-7.

So given the C-USA’s success in the Sun City, what are the chances El Paso could score another big national basketball hosting gig? Say, for example, a regional NCAA tournament…

“We’re gonna look into it and see what it takes so we’ll have a chance to host the regional NCAA tournament in a few years,” said Wickstrom. “I think the crowd showed we can support it.”

Wickstrom said ticket sales could have been better, though. We were a couple hundred tickets away from selling out the Don Haskins Center for the final game, likely because of the early tip-off time: 9:30 am.

“If I could change something (about the tournament), I’d change the game times to allow a lot more of our fans to come to the games instead of being stuck at work,” said Wickstrom.

C-USA game times are determined based on national TV programming schedules.