BOK Center more than OK with NCAA

<p><em class="gnmEkDate">Originally Published: Sep 22, 2009 9:1 AM CDT</em></p>From the "build it and they will come" department: The NCAA will stage 1st and 2nd round men's tournament games in Tulsa

Thursday, May 26th 2011, 1:17 pm

By: News On 6

Originally Published: Sep 22, 2009 9:1 AM CDT

From the "build it and they will come" department: The NCAA will stage 1st and 2nd round men's tournament games in Tulsa for the first time since 1985. After all those years of infighting, Tulsans finally got together and passed that plan a few years ago. You know the one, the one that resulted in the construction of the BOK Center. It may not have been one of the absolute main ideas, but making it big enough to put 18,000 people inside for a basketball game (almost twice as big as the Mabee Center) had to have had some NCAA thought behind it. Anything less than 16,000 and there's no real way Tulsa could have expected to host. Now it's big enough, the BOK and Tulsa Sports Commission officials smart enough, and doggone it, the NCAA likes us. The preparation for the 2-man NCAA site crew was so solid, NCAA officials called it perfect. There are still a few things to be tweaked, like the scoreboard adjusted to better serve basketball stats, but that will come. And so will some of the best teams in college basketball in March of 2011.