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How Peoria almost landed a Division I college basketball tournament

PEORIA — It started as a pie-in-the-sky joke among former Bradley folks. And it ended this week as a near-miss for Peoria hosting a Division-I college basketball tournament this Thanksgiving.

Several mid-major teams, including Bradley at first, had expressed strong interest in playing in an eight-team, three-day event held in the Louisville Slugger Sports Complex dome.

“A bubble within a bubble,” Rick Gaa called it. Gaa is a vice president for the Peoria sports complex and former development director for athletics at Bradley.

But before anything could be finalized, numerous well-heeled Midwest schools such as Illinois, Iowa, Xavier, Marquette and Nebraska usurped the idea and decided to put together their own tournaments.