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LAS VEGAS – Three days, and six college tournament games, down and now it’s onto the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena today for the Pac 12 Conference Tournament quarterfinals, beginning with the noon tip-off between top seed and regular-season champion UCLA and Arizona State.

Before I put the Honda Accord on its way west on Harmon and then south on Koval to get to that massive entity which is the self-parking structure at the city within a city that is the MGM, my thoughts on Wednesday’s Mountain West quarterfinal games:

*How many conferences can make the claim that each of its tourney quarterfinalists is a “quality” club?

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LAS VEGAS, Nev. – The regional semifinals in the California State Championships are being played tonight and there should plenty of dandy showdowns.

There are four of them in the new-fangled “Open Division”.

In South it will be Long Beach Poly at Santa Ana Mater Dei and L.A. Westchester at Etiwanda (both with 7 o’clock tip-offs).

Poly and Mater Dei, of course, first met in Southern Section title games in 1983 and ’84, with Gary McKnight – in his first season of what has evolved into a legendary coaching career – picking up his first championship and the Ron Palmer-coached LBP Jackrabbits returning the favor the following season, en route to a state title.

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LAS VEGAS, Nev. – The Gonzaga basketball team has been knocking down obstacles like so many wide-open 15-footers this season:

*An unbeaten regular-season West Coast Conference season: Wop!

*The program’s first-ever No. 1 national rating: Bang!

*Another WCC tournament: Count it!

*A first-ever No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament: As the late and oh-so-great Chick Hearn would have pronounced “This one’s in the refrigerator”.

The Bulldogs – or, as their players, coaches, followers and the world know them as “the Zags” – took care of that WCC tourney title in methodical fashion Monday night in front of 7,896 (6K or so seemingly wearing Gonzaga colors and regalia) in The Orleans Arena, whisking past Saint Mary’s for the third time, 65-51.

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BELLFLOWER, Ca. – A barnburner was anticipated.

And the Long Beach Poly and Bellflower St. John Bosco hoops teams delivered exactly that Friday night.

A SRO crowd estimated – by me – at about 2,800 jammed the newly refurbished, and spiffy, Cerritos College gymnasium for one of three of the first-ever California State Southern Regional “Open Division” playoff games.

And the Jackrabbits prevailed over the (technically) host SJB Braves, 61-59, in a contest with an outcome that was sealed until Jordan Bell grabbed the rebound of miss by Poly teammate Roschon Prince and laid the ball through the cylinder of the iron ever-so-gently as time expired.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – The first-ever “open divisions” for the California State boys’ basketball championships were unveiled early Sunday evening.

There was much speculation and, quite frankly, ignorance about what the makeup of the respective open brackets would look like when they were unveiled after the state’s section commissioners put them together on Sunday.

When they were finally made public, this much was abundantly obvious:

Both the Northern and Southern brackets make up, arguably, the most power teams-packed fields in state tourney history.

The Southern field was limited to seven teams when the San Diego Section elected to keep its Division I champion, San Marcos Mission Hills, in the D-I regional bracket.

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