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

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Utah Valley and the Western Athletic Conference have cleared up a dispute over a $1 million deposit that threatened to keep 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 for weeks. 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 a disputed exit fee for leaving the conference.

The WAC it was planning to release new brackets without Utah Valley if the deposit wasn’t made. 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 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.

A day later, the school noted that litigation over its exit is still pending — it does not believe it owes the $1 million exit fee — and it accused the WAC of failing to pay UVU approximately $2.3 million, including NCAA- distributed money earned by its athletes.

“To be clear, UVU has not paid a settlement or an exit fee to the WAC. While litigation is pending, and as part of the legal proceedings, UVU has agreed to place $1 million in an escrow account overseen by the Utah Court,” the statement said. “If UVU prevails in the litigation, that $1 million will be returned to UVU.”

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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