Good news, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Men’s Basketball Tournament will be coming back to Greensboro in 2023.
Greensboro was in the midst of the long awaited 2020 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament on Thursday, March 12, when everything came to a halt because of the coronavirus.
The first announcement was that the games on Thursday, March 12 would be played with each team limited to 150 people in the 20,000 plus seat Greensboro Coliseum. The media was also going to be allowed to attend the games.
But when the teams were out on the floor warming up for the first game on March 12, ACC Commissioner John Swofford came to the floor of the arena and announced that the tournament was being canceled. The official cancelation notice went out shortly after noon on March 12.
So for Greensboro, the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament was the first in a long series of public events, including church services, being canceled. Then came the Guilford County stay-at-home order and shortly after that Gov. Roy Cooper’s statewide stay-at-home order, which has now been extended to Friday, May 8.
In the press release about the 2023 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament, Swofford stated, “The partnership between the ACC and the city of Greensboro is extremely special, and one that has spanned nearly seven decades. The decision to bring the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament back to the Greensboro Coliseum was the right thing to do and we look forward to returning in 2023. We also appreciate the annual hospitality shown to our teams, schools, alumni and fans while hosting the ACC Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, the ACC Women’s Basketball Championship and the ACC Women’s Golf Championship.”
The 2021 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament will be played at the Capital One Arena in Washington, DC. And the 2022 ACC Tournament will be played at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Maybe Roy Cooper will have opened the state by then???