The Pac-12 on Saturday announced an "extension with Force 10 Sports Management, the Seattle Sports Commission and Seattle Center" to keep the women’s basketball tournament at KeyArena through '19, according to Adam Jude of the SEATTLE TIMES. The tournament first came to Seattle in '13 on a three-year contract, and during the past year Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said that the conference "pondered moving the women’s tournament to Las Vegas to pair it with the men’s tournament," which has been held at the MGM Grand since '13. But Scott said of Seattle, “There’s a sense that we’ve found a good home." Jude noted Washington on Friday "upset 11th-ranked Stanford before a crowd of 5,789 at KeyArena, a tournament record for a quarterfinal game" (SEATTLE TIMES, 3/6). Meanwhile, the FLORIDA TIMES-UNION reported 6,549 fans watched South Carolina's victory over Mississippi State in yesterday's SEC women's basketball championship game, "topping the crowd of 6,544" that attended the '14 title game at Duluth, Ga. It "brought the total attendance for the first conference tournament to be held in Florida to 29,526, which topped last year’s tournament in Little Rock, Ark., (25,821) and was just a shade over" the '13 tournament in Duluth (29,497) (JACKSONVILLE.com, 3/6).
