LAS VEGAS -- Lee Cummard is in luck.

That wish will come true today when the 6-foot-7 senior will join head coach Dave Rose, along with a player and coach of the other eight Mountain West Conference teams as the men's and women's programs meet up for a quick trip at Las Vegas' Marriott Renaissance hotel.

Cummard will most likely face questions about what it's like to be pegged as the top returning player. The league will announce the vote totals of the top five players in the league, plus top newcomers and the expected rankings of teams.

Figure the men will be in the top three, while the women will fall somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Rose will also field questions about how the team intends on chasing a third consecutive conference regular-season title after losing its starting guards to graduation, and center Trent Plaisted a year early to the professional ranks.

Cummard said he'll tell various media in attendance -- from newspapers that cover the MWC, plus the league's television network, The mtn. -- that replacing Plaisted's statistics won't be the hardest part.

"It will be Trent's experience," Cummard said. "That he understood what we were doing, and knew all of the little things that come with playing. But if we can do that, we'll be in luck."

The women's team will be represented by Jeff Judkins, who enters his eighth season and has a team that went 13-16 last year. The Cougars lost their top scorer (Mallary Carling) and best rebounder (Lauren Varley) to graduation.

Senior forward Shawnee Slade, second last year at 7.4 ppg, will join Judkins.

A hot topic for the women, besides how to rebound from Judkins' first losing season at BYU, will be the Nov. 25 home game against national power Connecticut.

Also, over the weekend BYU received another men's basketball commitment from Brandon Davies. The 6-9 Provo High standout told Rose his intentions Sunday.

Players cannot sign until Nov. 12. BYU has already received verbal pledges from Lone Peak center Nate Austin, Orem big man Ian Harward and Lone Peak's Tyler Haws.

Haws is a particularly interesting acquisition as he turned down schools like Stanford and Wake Forest -- which plays at BYU this season, by the way, and should be a top-10 team nationally.

Rose, however, cannot talk about any of those prospects until the signings are official.

The annual media day comes at a good time for both programs. Often, it's an interruption of practice for players and coaches. While both BYU teams are in daily workouts, official practice doesn't start until Friday evening.