Combined attendance for the Ivy League men's and women's tourney title games this season was 5,564getty images
The Ivy League is moving its '19 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments to Yale after "playing its first two" at The Palestra in Philadelphia, according to Marc Narducci of the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER. Ivy League Senior Assistant Exec Dir Trevor Rutledge-Leverenz said that it is a "one-year deal that the athletic directors voted on at their May meeting." The tournament will "suffer in attendance." Yale lists the "capacity of its John J. Lee Amphitheater as 2,800, with 1,500 permanent seats and 1,300 in pull-out bleachers." The Palestra’s capacity is 8,722. Rutledge-Leverenz said that this season the "combined attendance for the four semifinal games was 5,219." The "combined attendance for the two title games was 5,564." Both were improvements over '17, when the Saturday attendance "was 5,025 and the Sunday attendance was 3,833" (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 5/25). In Connecticut, David Borges notes Yale men's basketball coach James Jones had "long campaigned for an Ivy League tournament, and also believed it should be held in a more centrally-located site." Yale, with its proximity to N.Y. and Boston, "fits that bill as well as any other school in the Ivy." It is a much smaller venue than the Palestra, but Jones said that could "actually add to the charm of this year’s tournament" (NEW HAVEN REGISTER, 5/25). In New Jersey, Kyle Franko notes there had been "sentiment among some coaches to find a neutral location or opt for a rotating host for the tournament" (THE TRENTONIAN, 5/25).
