Four schools bid to host tournament

Since the Big South announced a couple weeks ago that it would no longer hold its conference basketball tournaments in Conway as scheduled this season, a response to Coastal Carolina’s pending move to the Sun Belt Conference next year, the league has received bids from four schools to host the event.

Campbell, High Point, UNC Asheville and Winthrop placed bids to host the men’s tournament and High Point and UNC Asheville also bid for the women’s tournament, Big South commissioner Kyle Kallander said Monday at the conference’s basketball media day inside the Fairfield Inn & Suites Charlotte Uptown hotel.

The conference’s athletic directors were expected to decide later in the day on a recommendation for the university presidents to vote on in the next couple weeks.

The Big South was set to receive $100,000 from the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce in the final year of a contract to host the tournaments at The HTC Center with VisitMyrtleBeach.com as the title sponsor before the conference enacted bylaws related to the Chants’ announced move to the Sun Belt to relocate the event.

Kallander said there was a “pretty wide range financially” among the bids, but he added that money will not be the only consideration.

“There are a lot of criteria, and we aren’t telling our athletic directors that you have to weigh anything more than anything else,” Kallander said. “I think every person who looks at the bids is going to have their own preference on what they’d like to see, and it could be the financials, it could be the location, it could be facility, it could be where the hotels are located. So there’s a lot of different factors that go into consideration for awarding the bid.”

Kallander said the Big South’s presidents, or “CEOs” as the league calls them, will try to reach a decision electronically, but at the latest he expects a final decision by the group’s scheduled Nov. 9 meeting.

“I think any of the sites will be great,” Kallander said. “I think any of those buildings really work well. Some are smaller than others, but they’ve proven that they can host events in the past.”

Coastal Carolina officials have been displeased with the way the process has played out after initially believing the conference had plans to move to a format that would award hosting privileges to the highest seed, still allowing them a chance to host the tournament. Ultimately, the league’s CEO’s decided to put the men’s and women’s tournaments out for bid and hold them on separate weeks rather than concurrently as had been the case the last three years in Conway.

Chants men’s basketball coach Cliff Ellis expressed his own displeasure with the situation Monday.

“Very disappointed. Disappointed from the standpoint that, I understand that policy has been implemented, but at the same point in time our Chamber of Commerce has been [working toward it] for several months, they’ve hired people, they’ve done a lot and I really felt like the future of the Big South [tournament] could have stayed at a neutral site in Myrtle Beach for a long time,” he said.

“I think they might look back one day and see they might have made a mistake. We’re going to live with the circumstances. It’s not what we want, definitely I hate it for our team, but I hate it more for the Chamber and the city because there was a lot of work put into this.”

If it can’t be at Coastal Carolina then Ellis has a recommendation for the decision makers.

“I think that based on what I’ve seen, Campbell should be the one because the best atmosphere that I have seen [in the Big South] in my tenure on the road was at Campbell two years ago, ESPN game,” he said. “It was a complete sell-out. It was a great game. I don’t know where [all the fans] came from, but they were in there. They have a new facility. I don’t have a vote, but that would be recommendation.”

Campbell coach Kevin McGeehan didn’t disclose details, but he believes his school made a very competitive bid financially and he made his own case for why the event would be a good fit in Buies Creek, N.C., citing the Fighting Camels’ recent success hosting Big South soccer and softball championships.

“I’m hopeful. I think we made a great bid and I think we put ourselves in position,” he said. “It starts with the facility. Eight years ago they built a facility that’s sort of the crown jewel of all the facilities in our league. I think it’s the best facility. Size-wise, it’s really perfect for a conference tournament. ...

“We need everybody to realize this is really attractive and it will be first class and really well run. So I’m very hopeful we can get the bid.”

Of course, High Point, UNC Asheville and Winthrop are optimistic too.

Wherever it ends up, the coaches agree they’d like a resolution sooner rather than later.

“Obviously it’s something that needs to be settled relatively quickly because there’s a lot involved in putting something like this on,” McGeehan said. “There’s a lot of moving parts and people that need to make arrangements.”

Said High Point coach Scott Cherry: “It’s a little unsettling not to know, but we’ve got 29 other games that we’ve got to play before we get to that point.”

Meanwhile, for all the angst expressed in recent years about Coastal Carolina having an unfair advantage hosting the tournament, at least one Big South coach said he doesn’t think moving the event to another conference school is the answer moving forward.

“I do hope we can find a neutral site that we can go to or we can go to the higher seed format,” Charleston Southern coach Barclay Radebaugh said. “... I personally don’t feel it’s best for the league for a member institution to host the tournament unless they have earned that right as the top seed.”

Cherry thanks Ellis

With his High Point team picked as the Big South preseason favorites, Cherry got the opportunity to address the coaches and media Monday and used part of his time to thank Ellis for serving as a mentor of sorts for him.

“Coach Ellis has done a lot of for me as far as influence and hearing and listening to him and the things that he’s said over my six, seven years being here to help me understand how this works and understand the things we should be fighting for and working toward as a league and just as a coach trying to get better and improve,” Cherry reiterated later.

Radebaugh also offered similar sentiments.

“I think the world of Cliff Ellis. He’s been really good to me in the league since we’ve been in the league together,” he said. “I’ve loved competing against his teams. It’s so challenging to compete against him, he’s so innovative and always creative in his attack. His staff has been great. The rivalry has been really good for our school and hopefully it’s been good for Coastal Carolina. ...

“I want to keep my relationship going with Coach Ellis and with Coastal Carolina. I think [the Sun Belt is] a logical move for them. The commitment they’ve put into athletics is evident and I say good for them.”

Staying on the schedule?

Speaking of continued relationships, Radebaugh said he’d like to keep Coastal Carolina on the schedule in the future if the schools can work out a home-and-home agreement.

“I think that would make a lot of sense if we can go home-and-home, to do that,” he said. “I don’t know if that would be great from a win-loss standpoint for us because obviously they’re going to continue to grow their program, but from a crowd standpoint, excitement on campus when Coastal Carolina pulls up and hopefully what we can bring to them, giving them a quality non-conference opponent, I’d certainly be willing to talk about that and discuss that with Coach Ellis.”

UNC Asheville coach Nick McDevitt indicated that he too would like to continue playing the Chants after they leave the Big South.

“Hopefully we can continue to come back down to Coastal Carolina and play some non-conference games now,” he said. “Myrtle Beach is a destination city so it’s fun for our fans to travel down there and watch us play, and it’s an environment that I think prepares you for playing high-level basketball in the Big South. They’re certainly somebody we want to continue playing.”

This story was originally published October 26, 2015 at 7:48 PM with the headline "Four schools bid to host tournament."