The Eastern 8/A-10 tournament started off miserably at the Philadelphia Spectrum but then had several good years at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, due to the three local teams, counting WVU. But after Pitt moved to the BE, the A-10 started having the tournament at a member school to try to ensure better ticket sales. Aside from RU (just once, I think), I can't recall who else hosted it. Probably WVU, perhaps PSU. Can't recall - once Littlepage came to RU, I didn't really follow it closely. But then in the magical 88-89 season, they came up with the formula of using the Palestra for the early rounds with the final to be held at the home court of the higher seeded team. That led to the famous "Back to the RAC" game vs. Temple following PSU's upset of #1 WVU. I'm sure several here were at that game, which was played during a blizzard that was not enough to deter a few thousand RU fans from making it down (and back) from the game.
The Palestra made sense because it was pretty likely that at least one team with a local following (RU, St. Joseph's, Temple, and PSU) was always likely to have a decent team. But most conferences don't have fan bases with any real tradition of traveling and so are pretty much forced to have a home court team involved. Something has to pay the bills and the A-10 had almost no TV money coming in back then.