The Big Ten Tournament is heading to the nation’s capital.
The 2017 edition of the Big Ten Tournament will take place at the Verizon Center in Washington, DC, marking the first time the tournament will be played outside of Chicago or Indianapolis.
Via USA Today:
The announcement comes fewer than two months before Rutgers and Maryland officially join the conference, and it comes on the heels of a few East Coast-centric moves that the Big Ten has made in recent months.
“At the time Maryland came in, we set an aggressive goal — to live in two regions in the country,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said. “Those were our words. We’ve been working hard over the last 18 months to match our actions to our words.”
Delany said 2017 offered the first possible opportunity to move the tournament to a location along the eastern corridor. The event “will undoubtedly return to Chicago and Indianapolis” — where it’s been held since its inception — at points in the future, Delany said. He said earlier this week he thinks the Big Ten tournament could be hosted on the east coast as often as a third of the time, while keeping its roots in the Midwest.
The 2017 version of the tournament will take place from March 8-12, 2017. It will be held in Indianapolis in 2016, and Chicago next year.
