[DJay23]

I wanted to share with my fellow Jayhawk fans my experience last night.

First I'll say that I attended KU, though I didn't finish my schooling there, I still got to some games and sat in the student section watching the 96/97 team of Vaughn, Pollard, LaFrentz, Haase, and Pierce. So I've been there and I've experienced it.

I now live in Central Pennsylvania. A friend of mine is a Syracuse fan and long story short he got a bunch of us together to go to a game (only a 3 hour drive) and then bitched out when his wife cracked the whip leaving 3 guys who could care less about Syracuse an excuse to hang out and drink beer in a different city. And go see the number one and undefeated team in the country play a middle of the road conference opponent.

So if you saw any of the highlights, you saw that the game was close throughout and NC State basically pissed the game down their leg in the last minute. I came away relatively unimpressed with Syracuse. They have trouble scoring against a team that really didn't look to have a ton of size or length and their defense was letting guys into the lane a lot. I'm not saying Syracuse is bad. You can't be undefeated and be bad, but they aren't playing very well at least right now. I think the season will end in heartbreak for those fans unfortunately...like in a round of 32/Sweet 16 loss. And it's too bad because they seemed like good people.

Anyway, the Carrier Dome is AWFUL. With as successful as that program is you'd think they would build something a little more homey. They create absolutely no atmosphere. They put the students in one end behind the basket which doesn't matter because noise just disappears in that place. The band has to be mic'd up to a terrible sound system that comes from speakers over the middle of dome...not the middle of the basketball "arena" part, the middle of the dome so good luck hearing anything very well. There are 2 "scoreboards" which are at weird angles to one another so from the baselines (where we sat) they are almost impossible to see, but I get it, cheap seats don't get the amenities. There are replay boards but they are the ones used for football games. At either end of the field. So one is kind of right in front of you (dependin on where you sit) and one is way down at the other end. There is no pump up video, they do put up a decibel meter at the tip, but it's just a graphic and like I said, noise just disappears in there. There is probably a good 20 feet between the court and any seats in any direction. I don't know how anyone sees much of anything in the first 4 rows. The place is a mess and the old saying "not a bad seat in the house" definitely does not apply.

I will say that the fans are passionate and actually care. They were a little dead in the first half but were getting on their feet a lot in the second half to try to urge on their team. The dome is smack in the middle of campus so you have to walk to it (no parking). We walked from our hotel downtown which wasn't far. The campus has some cool looking buildings and when you walk out of the doors of the dome there is a pressure release which causes this big whoosh of air. Little kids were kind of hanging back and running through the doors to get the air to push them out. That was kind of neat. We went to a place to eat before the game and everyone there was wearing Orange so that's all cool.

I just wanted to share my experience at a similar top program's arena because it helped me appreciate even more what we have in Lawrence. I haven't gotten back there since I was in college, but I told my friends who went with me that we need to go to see what a real college basketball game looks like.