Conference USA and Univ. of Tulsa officials yesterday announced that the ‘13 C-USA basketball tournaments “have been moved to Tulsa,” according to Bill Haisten of TULSA WORLD. The men’s games will be played on March 13-16 at BOK Center. The women's championship game and semifinals also will be at BOK Center, "while first-round and quarterfinal games are scheduled for the nearby Convention Center.” The Univ. of Memphis “had been scheduled to host the 2013 C-USA men's and women's tournaments.” However, after Memphis announced plans to join the Big East before the start of the ‘13-14 sports calendar, C-USA officials “began to explore the possibility of pulling the event from Memphis and taking it elsewhere.” When Tulsa hosted the ‘10 event, tournament officials “were disappointed by attendance figures,” as average attendance was 8,120 for three games at BOK Center. Officials had “expressed hope that the average would exceed 10,000” (TULSA WORLD, 6/12). In Memphis, Jason Smith notes the Univ. of Memphis, “which has hosted the C-USA men's tournament six of the last eight years," and the Univ. of Central Florida were the "only schools that submitted formal bids to host the tournaments prior to C-USA's spring meetings in Destin, Fla., last month.” But with both schools joining the Big East next year, C-USA officials "elected to reopen the selection process and leave the decision on a host city up to the league's school presidents and chancellors." Memphis AD R.C. Johnson said, "It's disappointing, but not unexpected. We were told at the spring meetings that some of the presidents wanted to talk about it.” Smith noted the C-USA BOD “elected El Paso, Texas, as host of the tournaments in 2014” (Memphis COMMERCIAL APPEAL, 6/12).
