ACC Tournament Big Apple Bound?

ACC Tournament Big Apple Bound?

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) has migrated northward up the Atlantic coast by gobbling up former Big East mainstays. So, league officials naturally want to move its March basketball tournament to the major media market on the East Coast. The conference is in talks to take its tournament to the Big Apple, specifically Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

“It wasn’t Madison Square Garden or else,” an ACC school official told Sports Illustrated. “People are enthralled with the Barclays Center. If The Garden is locked up, so be it. I don’t think [the Barclays Center] is a warm up act. It’s a hell of a facility.”

The addition of such schools as Pitt, Syracuse, and Notre Dame to the league prompted talks of the tournament’s northward migration. Because of ACC contractual obligations to arenas in Greensboro and Washington, DC, and a Barclays Center agreement with the Atlantic 10 Conference, the ACC’s tournament may not make its Big Apple debut until 2017 or later. 

The quarterfinal round of the current tournament takes place on Friday. Florida State battles top-seeded Virginia followed by Pitt versus North Carolina later that morning. NC State takes on the fast-fading Syracuse in the afternoon. Clemson-Duke concludes the day’s action.

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