The 21st annual IHSA Boy’s Basketball March Madness tournament takes place in Peoria for the new two weekends.
The precursor to spring in Peoria means about 4,000 overnight stays at hotels across the region including Morton, Pekin and Washington.
Kurt Gibson is the associate executive director of the IHSA. He says Peoria is great fit for the tournament because everything is centralized. This weekend features the one and two-A brackets of the tournament:
“This weekend generally contains the smaller schools and you really feel that small town atmosphere, that you don’t quite get the following weekend. So it’s really sort of the hoosiers weekend. But it’s still a special special time.”
Gibson says the teams that play this weekend are very competitive and promise to offer great high school basketball. CityLink is running shuttles with special fares from hotels to the Peoria Civic Center during the tournament.
Additionally, in 3A playoffs The Manual Rams play Bloomington Raiders Friday night at 7:00 at Bradley’s Renaissance Coliseum.