On Thursday, it was announced that the Atlantic 10 men’s basketball conference tournament will not be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. This was a shock to many because it seemed like the perfect venue for the conference as before the Barclays Center, the Atlantic 10 conference tournament used to be held at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Now, looking forward to the 2017 season, the Atlantic 10 men’s basketball conference tournament will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the Consol Energy Center and then in the 2018 season it will be held in Washington D.C. at the Verizon Center.
When first hearing the news, I thought to myself why would the tournament be in Pittsburgh because I always thought of that area as Big East country and now ACC. If you remember, the Pittsburgh Panthers were in the old Big East and are now in the ACC. Then when I thought of Washington D.C., I was more fond of that because there are schools such as VCU, George Mason, Richmond, and George Washington around that area so it’s a win-win.
The conference decided to make this change because of an agreement they had with the ACC. According ESPN.com senior writer Andy Katz, the two conferences agreed to play one doubleheader at the Barclays Center in 2015, ’16, and ’17 and in exchange the ACC gets to host their conference tournament in Brooklyn during those years.
This is a smart by the Atlantic 10 conference because even though they don’t get the chance to host their tournament in Brooklyn for two years, teams from the conference will be able play to play against top-notch competition from the ACC for the next three years. For example, say if an Atlantic 1o team beats an ACC team one of those three years, that will help boost up the conference’s RPI and in the process help the team’s strength of schedule.
Then when it comes down to Selection Sunday and if an Atlantic 10 team is on the bubble, that win against that ACC team who is not on the bubble could possibly them get into the tournament. For the Atlantic 10 it is a well thought out gamble.
Finally, after those two years in Pittsburgh and Washington D.C., the Atlantic 10 conference tournament will make its way back to Brooklyn in 2019, 2020 and 2021. For the Atlantic 10 this can only help the conference expand and be seen more by basketball fans alike.
I, on the other hand, wanted to know why Philadelphia wasn’t considered to be a destination for the Atlantic 10 tournament. In Philadelphia, you have the Wells Fargo Center and the Palestra to host games so it wouldn’t even be a problem, but upon doing further research, it has been in the city before.
From 1996-2003, the conference tournament was held in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Civic Center, then moved to the CoreStates Spectrum, which was then renamed First Union Spectrum and finally in 2003 it moved to Dayton, Ohio.
Maybe one day the conference tournament will come back to Philadelphia but for now it’s in Brooklyn and as Jay Z would say “Brooklyn we go hard.”