Game Day!!!!

Getting ready to head out for game 2 of our weekend road trip to watch the Lady Dukes. Hope we have a few fans at the game today at TD Arena.

Ladies are playing well. Hope Smalls is doing better and can play today. If not, will need her on Friday vs Drexel!!

Go Dukes!!

Rootin!!

Brian

Give us your take on TD Arena and let us know if it would have been a better venue for the Men's CAA tournament. The choice of the North Charleston coliseum doesn't make sense to me based on
1- tournament attendance trends
2- location is the way South of the CAA epicenter
3- coliseum is older
4- fans will prefer to spend time in Historic Charleston North Charleston

Lady Dukes crushing CoC 44-27 near half.

CoC has made this a game 1:30 left in 3rd and Dukes lead is down to 5

Dukes back up by 13 early 4Q.

Good win. Gotta tip the cap to CoC for making it interesting late.

LD's travel to Drexel Friday and then home against the Tribe late Sunday afternoon.

Towson is now 4-11 in the CAA. 2 of their 4 wins still boggle the mind as they are the LD's only 2 CAA losses. On the one hand, I'd love for the LD's to see them at the CAAT back at the Convo again to blow their doors off. On the other hand, I want no part of them. :>)

Only 3 regular season games left for JMU. The next one coming up will be the toughest. At Drexel Friday night, 7pm tip. Drexel is 11-4 in the CAA and sitting in 3rd place. The final 2 are at the Convo and should be wins...with emphasis on "should". Win at Drexel and the Dukes likely earn the #1 seed at home on March 9th.

RPI Live at Warren Nolan's site advises the Dukes stay at #39 in the RPI today while Elon has moved up to #25. It will be interesting to see if both Elon and JMU win out the remainder of the regular season and then meet one another in the CAAT championship game will the CAA get 2 bids to the NCAAT? We'll see...

So I just went over to the CAA standings...what the heck is this notation all about?

*Prior to seeding the 2017 CAA Women’s Basketball Championship, UNCW and William & Mary will have one additional win and one less loss on their conference records and Charleston will have two less wins and two additional losses.

http://www.caasports.com/standings.aspx?path=wbball

(02-20-2017 11:05 AM)bjk3047 Wrote:  So I just went over to the CAA standings...what the heck is this notation all about?

*Prior to seeding the 2017 CAA Women’s Basketball Championship, UNCW and William & Mary will have one additional win and one less loss on their conference records and Charleston will have two less wins and two additional losses.

http://www.caasports.com/standings.aspx?path=wbball

Apparently CoC supplied men's basketballs instead of women's (which are smaller) for those games. Naughty, naughty!

Wife and I just got home from the road trip. Watched two great games at UNCW and CofC. Yesterdays game became a bit of a nail biter but the ladies hung tough and gutted out a nice win. Puts them in a nice place standings wise with 3 games left. Fridays game at Drexel is going to be tough. Hope Smalls is back and Devon is ready to play.

Hart: To answer your questions re TD Arena. Nice facility. Seats about 5000 or so I believe. Just about all regular chairback seats and a few benches in the corners. Setup in a full lower bowl and a smaller (maybe 8-10 rows) upper bowl.. Plenty of restrooms and concession stands.

The drawback to using the Arena for the championship is its location. The Arena and CofC are located smack dab in the middle of the old city of Charleston. Streets are incredibly narrow, barely enough room for two cars to go by each other. I doubt the team buses could navigate the streets. There are hordes of tourists everywhere and dozens or more horse drawn carriage rides (we took one it was a great ride!!) that travel up and down all the streets further making the traffic situation worse. The real killer is that there is absolutely no parking near the arena. I did not see any place for team buses to go even if they could maneuver the streets and the closest public parking is 6 to 7 blocks away (parking garages) and would be able to accommodate only a tiny fraction of the parking needed for the tournament when fighting the tourists and residents.

So for those reasons that is why the TD Arena was not used. Would be a great facility to use but the logistics are impossible. My opinion anyway.

Go Dukes!!

Brian

Thanks, Just wondering because I have been to TD Arena, but not when a game was being played. It seems if they can handle buses and logistics when they host a home game, then they could handle tournament games with a little planning. IMO, the venue is much better suited for what the CAA has been downgraded to without ODU, VCU, George Mason in a formerly VA centric league. Small, yet new. In the midst of a tourist Mecca.
There would definitely be more reliance on walking in Historic Charleston, but that is kind of the vibe for that area anyway.

The tournament has no chance of drawing well in North Charleston at the coliseum.
Baltimore was a 3 year flop that most of us called in advance.
North Charleston is the next 3 year flop that won't add to the CAA brand one iota.

I believe CoC has the nicest and 2nd newest arena in the CAA. I think there will come a day when the CAA tourney goes to a conference member's home court both as a cost cutting measure and as a revenue enhancer. Perhaps that is TD arena or Towson's SECU arena or JMU's new arena.

Yeah, location isn't great for parking, but I drove by it several times my last time down there. It's right in the middle of everything, which is good and bad. Good...lots of places to drink and eat right around there. Plenty to do to make a trip out of it. Bad...you have to walk several blocks and park in a garage and there aren't any cheap hotels nearby. However, the garages really aren't too bad and within 15-20 minutes there are some places fairly cheap and not too far from the action. Or you can splurge and stay downtown, in which case you're guaranteed to have an awesome time. My wife had a conference down there a couple years ago, so I just walked around all day. 27k steps on a Saturday covering basically the whole historic area. Been there several times and can't get enough of it.

Wife and I enjoyed the trip we took to Charleston last weekend. Seems to be a great place to walk around.

I looked up the Charleston Coliseum and found that it was right across the street from the hotel we were staying in by the airport. My opinion is that the tournament was put there for 2 reasons rather than TD Arena. Larger facility, seats about 10K or so for hoops vs 5500 or so for TD and it is far easier to access and park at. I think the easier access was the real tipping point. Tournament would be fun at TD but from a cost and logistics standpoint I can see why they did what they did. Whether it will work out or not remains to be seen. Not having been to a MBB tournament I have no idea what sort of crowds it attracts.

Go Dukes!!

Brian

(02-20-2017 08:40 PM)Hart Foundation Wrote:  The tournament has no chance of drawing well in North Charleston at the coliseum.
Baltimore was a 3 year flop that most of us called in advance.
North Charleston is the next 3 year flop that won't add to the CAA brand one iota.

Is it really a 3-year contract? For some reason, I thought it was only in Baltimore for 2 years.