Utah Valley will play in WAC tournaments after $1 million deposit issue cleared up

By Canadian Press on March 11, 2026.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Utah Valley and the Western Athletic Conference have cleared up a dispute over a $1 million deposit that threatened to leave the Wolverines out of the league’s men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

Utah Valley plans to leave the WAC for the Big West Conference at the end of this school year and the two sides have been in court over an exit fee since earlier this year. The WAC said Tuesday that Utah Valley hadn’t complied with a judge’s order directing the school to place $1 million in escrow with the court, an amount equivalent to its exit fee for leaving the conference.

The WAC it was planning to release new brackets without Utah Valley if the deposit wasn’t made because the school would then “be a member not in good standing.”

That would have left the men’s tournament without its top seed. Utah Valley is the No. 4 seed in the women’s tournament, with both events starting Wednesday in Las Vegas.

The dispute was short-lived: The league issued another statement Tuesday night saying Utah Valley would be playing in both tournaments.

“The Western Athletic Conference has been assured by the Utah court that the $1 million payment from Utah Valley University is in process, in accordance with the court’s directive, and will be completed in the morning, before tipoff of the first game tomorrow,” the WAC said. “Relying on this assurance, the WAC board of directors will allow Utah Valley to compete in the WAC basketball tournaments.”

The school said it has been talking with court officials about the logistics of submitting the escrow payment and the league’s threat was out of line.

“In short, the action threatened by the WAC today to bar UVU from the WAC basketball tournaments would be an overt violation of this Court’s Preliminary Injunction Order,” attorneys for Utah Valley wrote in court documents. “This threat, let alone the actual removal of UVU from the tournaments, should not be countenanced by this Court.”

Utah Valley made headlines last September when conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during an event on the campus in Orem.

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The Associated Press

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