I believe it was that Cirque du Soleil had been booked into the then-Assembly Hall.
Why Stony Brook got the home game is another story. They had been building a new, bigger gym in the same building as their old one. When the 2008 recession hit, the state stopped construction. Stony Brook is in the conference where the tournament final is at the higher-seed's home gym. They won the regular season title, but the conference said their old gym was too small to host the tournament. So they scared up the money they needed and worked like crazy to get the new gym ready. Then, they lost early in the conference tourney, so all that effort seemed wasted, but they pleaded with the NIT to give them a home game if it were at all possible.