First reported at 1:57pm ET… Updated at 11:10pm ET…

The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference will be moving it’s Basketball Championships to the MassMutual Center in Springfield for three straight years, starting in 2012.

The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, choosing a neutral site, will move their Conference Basketball Championships to the MassMutual Center in Springfield, MA for three straight years.

The Times Union Center has hosted the tournament for the last two years and will this year. The Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton was scheduled to host the tournament in 2009 but requested the MAAC make alternate plans in July 2008 to move the Championships to Albany.

The last time the MAAC Tournament was hosted for 3 or more years before this was when the MAAC made a home in upstate New York: when they let Albany host seven straight MAAC Tournaments from 1990 to 1996.

The Conference’s 10 Presidents voted on a new facility, choosing the MassMutual Center over Bridgeport’s Arena at Harbor Yards and the Times Union Center. Newark’s Prudential Center withdrew their bid just under a week ago.

The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference scheduled a press conference tomorrow morning to make the announcement in Springfield.

Springfield, the home to the National Basketball Hall of Fame, has distinguished itself as an ideal candidate to host the tournament and has an intimate setting of just over 6,000 seats. The MassMutual Center currently hosts the AHL’s Springfield Falcons and the NBA Development League’s Springfield Armor.

The MassMutual Center hosts various UMass Basketball games and is set to host the NCAA Division II Championships, the Elite Eight, in the next two years.

This will be the first time where the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference will give such a neutral feel since having the tournament held in the Meadowlands in the late 1980s.

Last year the MAAC set a record drawing 52,820 to the Times Union Center culminating in Siena’s second straight MAAC Championship.

This year’s MAAC Basketball Championships marks the 15th time the tournament will be hosted in Albany.