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This university won’t join the Big Ten until July 1, but yesterday afternoon Jim Delany, the conference’s commissioner, took a step toward fulfilling a promise to Terrapins men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon.

During a news conference at Verizon Center in Washington, Delany announced the arena will host the 2017 Big Ten men’s basketball tournament in a move that continues his efforts to extend the Midwest-based conference’s presence to the East Coast. 

And with Athletic Director Kevin Anderson and Turgeon onstage to his left, Delany sent a message that the Big Ten was embracing this university. 

“When we first met with Jim he said, ‘We’re going to have a face on the East Coast,’” Turgeon said. “A lot of times, it’s lip service when you’re joining a league, but he came through.”

This university will be the only Big Ten school within 150 miles of the nation’s capital. Both Anderson and Turgeon said the conference’s decision to host the tournament at Verizon Center was a nod to the Terps and their fans. 

Delany also said at the news conference that he plans on returning the event to Verizon Center. He said he expects the conference to work out a rotation in which the event shuffles among Chicago, Indianapolis and Washington.

“I think these events will live in the East as well as in the Midwest,” Delany said.

Delany was eager to move the tournament into the Washington area. But when the Terps formally announced their move to the Big Ten in the fall of 2012, the conference had already signed on to hold its men’s basketball tournament in Chicago and Indianapolis in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

The 2017 tournament did not have a home, though, and five months ago, the conference began discussions with Verizon Center.

“We had been thinking about how best to enter into the East,” Delany said. “We know big events are an important part of it.”

So Delany aggressively pursued the option of bringing the tournament to Washington in 2017, and yesterday’s announcement made it official.

“This is something that we dreamed of,” Anderson said. “To have the commissioner and my colleagues in the Big Ten acknowledge that we should be here, and to do this immediately tells us how welcome we are and how excited we are going into the Big Ten.”

Each of the previous 17 Big Ten tournaments has been in Indianapolis or Chicago. But Delany said the benefits of expanding the conference’s footprint outweigh the negatives of moving away from the traditional locations.

Delany pointed to previous decisions — from adding Penn State to the league in 1991 to establishing the Big Ten Network in 2006— as reasons why Big Ten fans should welcome changes.

“It’s important to look forward but also to look in the rearview mirror to see where you’ve been and where you want to go,” Delany said.

In 2016, one season before the Big Ten will hold its conference tournament at Verizon Center, the ACC — the Terps’ current conference — will play its tournament at the venue. 

Delany isn’t shying away from moving in on what used to be ACC territory, and the Big Ten has taken several strides recently to expand its reach to the East Coast. Earlier this week, the conference announced the development of the Gavitt Tipoff Games, a series that will pit the Big Ten against the Big East in men’s basketball and added Johns Hopkins as a lacrosse-only member last spring.

“There’s going to be competition between the Big Ten and the ACC in this region,” Delany said. “They are going to do the best they can to generate fan followship, and so will we.”

Delaney said hosting the men’s basketball tournament in Washington, should help the Big Ten compete for attention in this area. But Delany also said the move is important because it helps develop the league’s relationship with the Terps. 

At the least, Delany followed through on his words to Turgeon.

“He said he was going to get out here to the East Coast,” Turgeon said. “And he did as quickly as he could.”