I’d love to know how Miami coaches sell the basketball aspect of recruiting. Fans = a handful, Arena = garbage, locker room = meh?, gym = fairly decent…
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There are far worse facilities and far better facilities in mid-major hoops. Miami’s is a bit obsolete because it’s essentially a theater style seating arrangement. But it’s well kept.
The fans issue is a problem and the fact that we’re in a small ex-urban town doesn’t help bring in casual fans.
Winning consistently should bring in more fans and being able to bring more significant teams to Oxford and be competitive with them will help that.
We can’t do anything about our location. And that will always be a concern with hoops.
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Ah…it’s not garbage. If you could get rid of the track and get the fans up on the floor it would help for sure with game atmosphere. Hardly worn out from overuse and over crowding. A bunch of nice wins would help a lot along with a major sugar daddy to donate a small fortune into it to resize it for what’s really practical for Miami basketball and brighten it up at the same time. It has good bones.
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Lipstick on a pig. I used to stick up for Millett, but it’s time came and went decades ago. We talk ourselves blue in the face about how to increase attendance - a new arena with actual bright lights and arena acoustics would do wonders. I remember when Xavier opened the Cintas Center and the transformation of their program was complete.
Our esteemed Governor never misses a chance to tout his allegiance to Miami. It’s time for Crawford and Sayler to put the full court press on DeWine and Zac Haines, and get a relevant facility.
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Did I tell you guys that in the first half of the mac title game the governor sat beside me with his grandkids to his right and my group to my left. He was great for a half and then went to a loge
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Speaking of Miami politicians, I have two interesting pieces. I have a program from a game I attended while I was in high school. It was the 1965 Homecoming game vs Marshall. On the cover was a photo of the Homecoming Court, complete with Homecoming King Mike Oxley.
When I was the Alumni Chapter coordinator in Seattle I hosted a Watch Party for the 2003 GMAC Bowl. Senator Maria Cantwell attended. We had know each other through the alumni chapter since she was my Washington State Legislator in the 80s. We had co-hosted a luncheon with Randy Walker at Salty’s on Alki when he was our head coach.
Maria brought a guest staff member to that watch party in 2003, Ari Melber - now an evening host on MSNBC. Ari is a Seattle native - Garfield HS grad who had gone to Michigan before law school at Cornell. He didn’t buy my argument that Ben would be a great NFL QB or that Miami would finish ahead of Michigan in the AP Poll that season.
Michigan finished 6th and Miami finished 10th so he won that argument. He definitely lost the first argument.
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Ari is a sharp guy. I’m not crazy about his network, but I do like his show.
“Opinionated, but not partisan.” Can’t ask for more!
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