Palestra a potential site for AAC conference tourney

It appears that the old Big East's loss could be the Palestra's gain.

Sources close to the American Athletic Conference recently reported that the Palestra is one of the potential sites for the new conference's basketball tournaments moving forward.

The conference hit the hardest by realignment was, without question, the Big East. One of the premiere basketball leagues in the nation, the Big East was hampered when schools like Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Louisville decided to make the move to the ACC.

While the future looked bleak for the Big East for some time, the conference passed the point of no return when seven of 10 schools decided to form their own basketball conference.

Although the "Catholic Seven" schools and their new fellow league members will maintain the Big East name, a new conference, the American Athletic Conference (AAC), has taken form in response to the collapse of the former Big East.

Current Big East members Louisville, Connecticut, Cincinnati, Rutgers and USF will join up with Temple, Houston, Memphis, SMU and UCF in the AAC next season. Louisville and Rutgers will depart the conference in 2014, while three more schools, ECU, Tulane and Tulsa enter.

The 2013-14 school year will be the first in which the AAC participates in college athletics. Because the league can no longer play its college basketball tournaments at Madison Square Garden in New York (as was tradition in the old Big East), the AAC needs to find a new site.

According to Mark Blaudschun, AAC commissioner, Mike Aresco, is a fan of the historic nature of Penn's basketball arena. Moreover, the Palestra seats fewer than 9,000 people, and the small size of the venue would create an increased demand for tickets to the multi-day event.

Arenas in Hartford, Memphis and Orlando also remain in the mix.

While it remains to be seen if the Palestra is chosen as a site for the first AAC Tournament, the arena is certainly a possibility. The Ivy League does not have a conference tournament in either men's or women's basketball, and the Penn basketball seasons' typically end prior to the beginning of conference tournament season.