College Basketball Tourneys Coming to Brooklyn
Coming soon to the Barclays Center: yet more basketball played at a sub-professional level! Today, Brooklyn’s most/least favorite sporting and entertainment venue announced agreements with the Atlantic Coast Conference (henceforth referred to as the ACC) and the Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10) to host the postseason college basketball tournaments for the two conferences through 2021.
The deal brings the ACC Tournament, which (often) includes college basketball powerhouses like Duke, the University of North Carolina, and Syracuse, to Barclays in 2017 and ’18. The A-10 was already scheduled for Barclays in 2015 and 2016; it will now return to the venue for three years in 2019, 2020 and 2021. It’s a mid-major with less heralded programs than the ACC, but in recent years has produced March Madness darlings like George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth.
“We are pleased that the ACC Basketball Tournament will be played at Barclays Center in 2017 and 2018,” said ACC Commissioner John Swofford, in a statement. He then dropped this knowledge bomb: “Barclays Center has quickly emerged as one of the premier sports and entertainment venues in the world and Brooklyn is a hot spot within the New York marketplace.”
If this news means we Brooklynites get to witness, in the flesh, moves like those Mercer guard Kevin Canevari busted after his team’s recent upset of Duke (ACC) in the NCAA tournament, then we’re all winners.
Follow Phillip Pantuso on Twitter @phillippantuso