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The last time BYU played basketball at the Dee Events Center, in 2006, the Cougars beat the Weber State Wildcats in overtime. It was also the first year of LDS mission service for BYU guard Jackson Emery, who will be making his first DEC appearance as a Cougar on Wednesday night. It will not be his first playing appearance in the building, however. Emery and his Lone Peak Knights won the state tourney on that floor in the spring of 2005, and he was shortly thereafter named 4A MVP.

Emery reflects on that championship run and his return to the Dee Events Center in an interview we did this afternoon. You can hear it by clicking on the link in the "Cougar Cuts" box to the lower right.

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The BCS powers-that-be have kept TCU and Boise State in the BCS selection pool, and the Las Vegas Bowl may as a result be inclined to wait until Sunday to send out its invitations.

One view is that the longer the Las Vegas Bowl waits to make a pick, the more likely it is that BYU will not be selected to play there. I'm not so sure about that, since postseason etiquette would seem to dictate that the Las Vegas Bowl at least wait until TCU is released from BCS consideration before eliminating it as a Las Vegas Bowl participant. In other words, while TCU may not be Vegas' choice, to indicate that before Sunday would be a bit of a slap to the 11th rated team in the country.

While lots can happen between now and Sunday, the information I get is that the Las Vegas Bowl inroads currently being paved lead directly from Southern Nevada to Northern Utah.

What is interesting is that if bowl officials wait until Sunday to issue invitations, they'll end up with less than two weeks' lead time to sell tickets through the two schools and generate publicity for the game. Remember that the Pac-10 half of the Las Vegas Bowl equation will also not be determined until the weekend, when Arizona-Arizona State, Cal-Washington and USC-UCLA will help determine the Las Vegas Bowl participant from that league.

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