Earlier this year, I visited XL Center in Hartford for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, which meant that the arena counted as an NCAA venue. But the UConn Huskies play there too, and as I am trying to see home venues as much as possible, I made their tilt against New Hampshire the third game of the weekend. The secondary market had tickets at $20, but when I asked at the window, I was told the cheapest was $5. Always check the box office first.
I'm not going to talk about the game much; it was brutally slow with 38 fouls, a technical, 3-minute timeouts (some team timeouts were extended for good measure), replay reviews and a recurring nosebleed for one player. The New Hampshire Wildcats of the America East Conference were the visitors and took an early 18-9 lead, prompting a timeout from UConn coach Dan Hurley (brother of Bobby), who is extremely demonstrative. The speech worked as the Huskies went on a 15-0 run and took a 40-36 lead at the half.
A 12-1 UConn surge to start the second stanza stopped any shot of an upset as the Huskies went on to win 88-62. The game took about 2:10, which isn't that bad, but it just never had any flow to it. At least the officials were consistent, calling 19 fouls on each team, and 19 in each half. The longest period without a foul was 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I overheard a fan calling it a "dud" afterwards and had to agree. Glad I only paid $5.
Anyway, this game led me to re-evaluate my venue counting rules. Before, I was double-counting venues for the same sport if I saw a home team and a neutral-site game there, or two teams at a different level. For example, the Carrier Dome in Syracuse was counted once for the East Regional and once for the Orange. Similarly, Powerade Center in Brampton counted once for ECHL and once for OHL. After much thought, however, I decided to only count a venue once for each sport it hosts. So the Barclays Center went from 5 to 3 (Nets, Islanders, and boxing), with the Long Island Nets and A-10 tournament no longer counting towards my grand total, which went from 850 to 811, with 742 of those unique buildings.
Still, Barclays does count as a G.League and NCAA venue as I want to maintain accurate lists for each league. The best way to put this is Staples Center counts once as a basketball venue, but twice as an NBA venue (Lakers and Clippers) and once as a WNBA venue (Sparks). The only problem with this is that the total venue count for each sport will not equal the sum of the venue counts for the leagues in that sport.
This also resulted in an analysis of NCAA basketball venues. Did you know that with four more schools joining Division I hoops in 2020 and several schools maintaining two home stadiums (often the men play in a larger off-campus arena, while the women play in an on-campus gym), there are 388 Division I basketball venues? That is more than triple those in Club 123 and more than double the 160 in minor league baseball. I've only seen 83 of these (77 men, 3 women, 3 tournament), which leaves 305 to go.
Grouping these geographically, it would require 71 trips to see them all, with 4-5 visits for each trip. With the season only four months long, and assuming two trips per month, it would take 9 years to finish. You'd have to have schedules work out as well, which is quite unlikely. As an example, I'd want to have Arkansas, Arkansas State, Central Arkansas, and Arkansas-Little Rock playing on 4 consecutive days (I've already seen Arkansas-Pine Bluff). I can't imagine that happening too often. For now, I'll be looking to add these venues when I can, but this won't become an official quest.
Next Up
I will add get three more NCAA gyms next week in LA as the UCLA is home on Saturday afternoon, Loyola Marymount on Saturday evening, and USC on Sunday evening. The Rams host the Cardinals in the last NFL game at the Coliseum as well, so it will be a busy weekend. Check back for recaps in the New Year.
Until then, Happy Holidays everyone!
Best,
Sean
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