Syracuse Basketball: Coaches don’t view the Dome as one of best arenas

Yeah, I’ve got Orange-colored glasses on a lot of the time, but I’ll never forget the experience I had when I visited my alma mater in early February of 2014 to watch Syracuse basketball battle Duke.

At the time, the ‘Cuse was in the middle of a 2013-14 season where it had just moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference from the Big East Conference.

In that campaign, Syracuse basketball would start out 25-0, a program record, and that hot beginning included several memorable games, none bigger than the Orange besting Duke, 91-89 in overtime, on the Hill before a then-NCAA record 35,446 ridiculously loud fans.

The energy in the Dome was electric. The game itself was a back-and-forth slugfest featuring two really good teams, and two Hall of Fame head coaches.

Other than when I saw the ‘Cuse defeat Marquette during the 2013 NCAA Tournament in Washington, D.C., to advance to the Final Four (Michigan, yuck), this ACC encounter between the Orange and the Blue Devils on Super Bowl weekend was, hands-down, the most exciting ‘Cuse contest I’ve ever witnessed in person.

Syracuse basketball has the largest on-campus arena for college hoops.

Now, Matt Norlander of CBS Sports recently polled dozens of college coaches on a range of topics, and one of these topics asks the question, which arenas in college basketball possess the best home-court environments?

Norlander says that the now-named JMA Wireless Dome did receive one vote in this particular poll, but many other arenas arrived ahead of the Orange’s home.

The top three are Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse, Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium and Gonzaga’s McCarthey Athletic Center. Others high up on the list include Purdue’s Mackey Arena, Arizona’s McKale Center, Indiana’s Assembly Hall and Kentucky’s Rupp Arena.

None of those – I repeat none of those – just mentioned are any surprise whatsoever. But others further down in the poll that had more votes than the ‘Cuse Dome did kind of surprise me.

No disrespect to any of these schools, but those ahead of the Dome include arenas on the campuses of Wichita State, Grand Canyon, Butler (gross), VCU, Tennessee, Dayton, BYU and San Diego State.

I don’t know if recency bias comes into play here, since Syracuse basketball hasn’t been all that stellar on the court over the last handful of seasons.

And these aren’t true apples-to-apples comparisons, as all of these arenas can greatly differ in how many fans they can fit inside their facilities.

Again, I’m a Syracuse University alum and have my own personal biases.

But when 30,000 to 35,000 boisterous ‘Cuse fans pack the Dome and scream their heads off, I don’t think anything across the country in college basketball comes close to what one will experience in Central New York.