Delaney: Condensed schedule a mistake, but BTT will go East again

Submitted by jimmyshi03 on

Via Teddy Greenstein

Delaney essentially cops to this being a bad conference schedule, but says the conference tournament will be in the east again, 

“I know we will be back out East. Where we will be, I don’t know. It won’t be on a regular basis. I expect that 80 percent will be in legacy territory (Chicago and Indianapolis) and probably 20 percent out East, whether it’s in D.C. or Philadelphia or New York.”

 

Obviously I'd like to see more rotation within the conference footprint, say to Detroit and possibly Cleveland, Milwaukee or Minneapolis. Going back to NYC without a condensed schedule would seem to rule out MSG, so you're talking Barclay's or the Meadowlands. Also, he explicitly ruled out the Palestra if it was to be held in Philly which seems stupid. 

JamieH

February 23rd, 2018 at 2:32 PM ^

Delany rarely admits when he screws up.  So at least there is that.

 

I don't mind occasional tournaments in NY, so that is fine with me.  I'm glad they are going to fix the schedule. 

Bambi

February 23rd, 2018 at 2:33 PM ^

I'll give Delaney props here, a little. Admitting the condensed schedule is dumb is a step in the right direction, but he should have realized that before doing it.

I like the idea of doing it out East every once in a while, so 20% sound good to me.

Also no Palestra makes sense, it can only seat 8000. Verizon Center last year seats 20K.

funkywolve

February 23rd, 2018 at 2:44 PM ^

Regardless of the history of the Palestra, there's no way the BTT is going to be held in an arena that only seats 8000 people.  In addition, a large percentage of the seats are bleacher style seats, ie - no seat back.

TrueBlue2003

February 23rd, 2018 at 4:32 PM ^

Good one.  They've gone the way of the dodo bird and sabre toothed tiger.

Seriously though, there are so many alums from all the B1G schools that it is a really fun, mixed crowd.

I haven't been to Indy and hear it's a good location because the tournament dominates downtown (which certainly doesn't happen in a city like Chicago), but there is not doubt that Chicago is by far the best location to accomodate the most fans.

TrueBlue2003

February 23rd, 2018 at 4:36 PM ^

Detroit would be a great host city, better than Indy in some ways (more accessible airport thanks to Delta hub, downtown casinos).  Indy might be a good host city precisely because it's not a destination and therefore can turn the entire downtown into BTT central, but no reason Detroit couldn't do something very similar.

Space Coyote

February 23rd, 2018 at 2:42 PM ^

Detroit hosts Horizon League. Cleveland hosts MAC. It's not to say it can't work with the B1G, but without facing the same issue that the B1G is facing in NY this year, it's hard to work around those issues (without I assume the B1G paying those tournaments to go elsewhere).

I know there is a ton of B1G representation in Chicago, but Indy really is the best. It's a small big city, and because it doesn't have so much else, they really dedicate the downtown to the tournament. I know I had fun there whenever I've gone

Kevin14

February 23rd, 2018 at 3:01 PM ^

This year is March 2-6th.  The 6th is Tuesday of the week the BTT is traditionally held.  So, in theory the dates aren't the conflict there.  It would be tricky w/ forcing the Pistons/Wings to be on the road for 10 days, but Madison Square Garden is presumably doing it this year with BTT, Big East tourney, Knicks/Rangers.

AcheBlue

February 23rd, 2018 at 2:44 PM ^

Cities in the "B1G footprint" that would likely love to host and have the facilites:

Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh

and just for fun...

Toronto!

LSAClassOf2000

February 23rd, 2018 at 2:59 PM ^

You are indeed right, I believe - those cities would love to host them and probably could do so very easily depending on coordination with other events since I know Detroit gets the Horizon League Tournament usually and I think Cleveland typically hosts the MAC Tournament.

That being said, Delany loves his conference's traditional footprint so much that he opened the door to cities like Secaucus, Weehawken, New Rochelle and Bethesda too. 

SFBlue

February 23rd, 2018 at 2:47 PM ^

What was the initial rationale to the condensed schedule? Because B1G was tweaked seeding was done before the conference tournament final was over? Avoding that seems like a good idea to me (and may have helped Michigan last year)

Edit: article says it was to secure MSG. Still, it's not good to have the seeding done when B1G teams are playing. 

J.

February 23rd, 2018 at 3:35 PM ^

In Jim Delany's warped mind, the Big Ten is supposed to play second fiddle to another conference.  That irks me as much as anything else.  The Big East has only been around 40 years... and, despite what they may think, they've only really been relevant for about half of them -- the early to mid 80s with the Hoyas and occasional Syracuse team, and then the late 90s to early 2000s with UConn.

TrueBlue2003

February 23rd, 2018 at 4:49 PM ^

2018 schedule.  Moving up the tournament necessitated having two games in December and make teams work their non-conf schedules around that.

The reason we had weeks in which teams played 4 games in 8 days is that we wanted more Monday and Friday games for TV and unnecessarily took weekends off to get those Monday and Friday games.