Preparations underway for Big 12 tournaments in downtown Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A number of roads are closed, banners hanging and flags flying round downtown Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, forward of the Huge 12 Convention males’s and girls’s basketball tournaments.

The males play Wednesday via Saturday on the T-Cellular Middle. The ladies’s groups play Thursday via Sunday at Municipal Auditorium. Subsequent 12 months, the ladies may also play at T-Cellular Middle.

The convention hosts fan fest actions for the lads’s championship on Grand Boulevard outdoors the T-Cellular Middle. The lady’s championship fan fest takes place at Barney Allis Plaza.

The KC Reside! courtyard inside the Energy and Gentle District transforms into “Hoops Central” through the event. It can host pep rallies and watch events for males’s groups forward of their video games. Jason Bradley is the director of leisure and manufacturing for the Energy and Gentle District. Whereas the event has been in Kansas Metropolis yearly since 2010 (and a complete of 21 earlier occasions), he tries to deliver one thing new annually. The tournaments will stay in Kansas Metropolis via 2027.

“It’s not only a wash and repeat,” Bradley stated.

This 12 months, the district hung extra flags representing the Huge 12 groups. Crews put in extra lights to assist make pep rallies come alive.

“Our aim is once we do pep rallies, for instance for Baylor, we wish the stage to actually appear to be it’s Baylor’s after they go up there. Identical factor with Okay-State. We actually need to make it really feel like this venue turns into theirs for his or her pep rally,” Bradley stated.

The enjoyable ends with a efficiency by Shaquille O’Neal as DJ Diesel within the KC Reside! Block Saturday night time after the lads’s championship recreation. A $20 ticket is required to attend the present, however all different fan fest and pep rallies are free to the general public.