Following a three-year run in Baltimore, the Colonial Athletic Association’s men’s basketball tournament will move to Charleston, S.C., next March.
The tournament will be held in the North Charleston Coliseum in 2017, ’18 and ’19. The arena’s seating capacity is 11,475, similar to Baltimore’s Royal Farms Arena and the Richmond Coliseum, where the event was held from 1990-2013.
“The Charleston area speaks for itself, and this is a community that really supports college basketball,” CAA commissioner Tom Yeager said. “They mobilized and put together an attractive package to be able to stage the tournament here.
“And moving your event around within the geographic footprint of the conference, that usually gives a shot in the arm to different regions. It all came together.”
Yeager, who is retiring in the spring, said there were “three or four very specific proposals” from different localities. Charleston was the unanimous pick of the athletic directors.
“When we did the comparisons, they had the edge,” William and Mary AD Terry Driscoll said. “Their bid definitely distinguished them from others. It was a well-structured bid.”
Though the CAA has no complaints with Baltimore or Royal Farms Arena, attendance figures have taken a dip. Last year’s final, in which Northeastern beat William and Mary, drew 5,721. The year before, W&M’s loss to Delaware, was 5,414.
In the tournament’s final 10 years in Richmond, the average attendance for the championship game was 9,265. Even excluding the six games in which hometown VCU played in the final, the average was 7,049.
“In Baltimore, it didn’t seem like the casual basketball fan was coming to the games the way we had hoped,” Driscoll said. “Baltimore worked hard to promote it, and we did ourselves, but there are an awful lot of things to do and Baltimore is a big city.”
With all of Charleston’s positives, there is an obvious negative: location. It is the southernmost city in the conference, nearly 1,000 miles from Northeastern, the northernmost school. Six of the 10 CAA members will have to travel at least 450 miles.
“It’s on one of the poles of the conference, not dead center,” Yeager said. “But the advantages offset that. And all 10 schools participated in that decision knowing full well what it meant to their institution.”
But as the southernmost city, Driscoll welcomes a warmer climate.
“It’s a good time of the year down there,” he said. “Baltimore’s a little chilly, so we’re hoping it’ll be more mild down there, which might be more attractive to people. Maybe our students on their way to Florida for break will stop on the way down.”
Johnson can be reached by phone at 757-247-4649.
