Southern Conference Comes to Charlotte

Conference’s men’s, women’s tournaments will get a test run in city. Games will be played at two arenas.

By David Scott
dscott@charlotteobserver.com

Posted: Friday, Apr. 10, 2009

Charlotte’s college basketball calendar grew fuller Thursday when the Southern Conference announced it would move its 2010 men’s and women’s tournaments here.

There’s a twist to the one-year switch from Chattanooga, Tenn. – where the tournaments were held last season and had been scheduled to return in 2010: Early rounds for both events, scheduled for March 4-8, will be played at Bojangles’ Coliseum on Independence Boulevard, with semifinals and finals set for a scaled-down Time Warner Cable Arena.

Southern Conference Commissioner John Iamarino said the smaller Bojangles’ Coliseum (seats 11,000) will be more suitable for the tournaments’ early rounds. Then, for later rounds, sections of 20,000-seat Time Warner Cable Arena will be curtained off to limit capacity to 8,000.

“This is the product of a pretty unique set of circumstances,” said Mike Crum, chief executive officer of the Charlotte Regional Visitor’s Authority. “Bojangles’ is smaller and costs less than the big building.”

Crum also said holding the early rounds in Bojangles’ will allow the Charlotte Bobcats more flexibility with their schedule.

With Charlotte absent from the ACC tournament’s most recent scheduling rotation (it will be in Greensboro in 2010-11 and 2013-15 and Atlanta in 2012), the Southern Conference and CIAA tournaments have emerged as the city’s college basketball foundations for at least one year.

Iamarino said the major reason for relocating the Southern Conference tournament was Charlotte’s location. Eight of the Southern Conference’s 12 schools are within about 200 miles of Charlotte, which last hosted the league tournament in 1971.

“This has been identified by our presidents and the NCAA as a cost-containment year,” said Iamarino. “We saw an opportunity to put our tournament in a more centrally located place. For the majority of our (schools) and fans, they’ll be able to spend less money.”

Iamarino said the switch to Charlotte isn’t related to attendance at last season’s tournament in Chattanooga’s 11,218-seat McKenzie Arena, which drew 5,042 for the men’s championship game between Chattanooga and College of Charleston. The tournament will return to Chattanooga in 2011 and the league will consider bids for the 2012-14 tournaments in 2010.

Crum said whether Charlotte will bid for future Southern Conference tournaments will depend on factors including the success of next season’s event and avoiding scheduling conflicts with the CIAA tournament (scheduled to be in Charlotte through 2011).

“We see this as an opportunity to get a foothold in the Charlotte market,” said Iamarino. “We’d like to see what kind of reaction we get from the community.”

Iamarino also jokingly said he hoped the tournament’s relocation to Charlotte would help persuade Davidson junior star Stephen Curry to remain in school for one more season and not turn professional.

“If he wants to stick around so he can play a tournament in his own backyard, we’d be all for that,” Iamarino said.