There's no place like home

There was yet another Freep column today about which building BU should play basketball inside of. The Hot Dog has established in the past that he is strictly in favor of Case Gym as the home for BU basketball. The guy who wrote yesterday's article, known to Freep.com readers only as "MEYER," is in favor of playing our home games at Harry Agganis Arena. I thought I'd weigh in.

First, the Hot Dog's case for Case stems mostly from the performance of the current and recent teams, in terms of winning percentage and shooting percentage. The reality is, those things are going to correct themselves back to the mean in time. There is no Agganis Curse, as Coach Wolff rightfully insists and I'm sure the HD knows this. But Hot Dog makes good points about practice time and comfort level on the Agganis floor that are valid - but I think those are things that will improve on their own over time as well. The Terriers won their fifth game at The Greek this year, and looked more comfortable than I have ever seen them play there in their win over Albany. They play the last game of the season there against Hartford, and I'm predicting the comfort level will continue to improve with each game.

I disagree with MEYER's original complaint that BU's "big deal" of a Bracketbuster game should have been played at Agganis; it would have been a big deal if it were a real Bracketbuster on TV, but it wasn't... and if we had gotten a TV game, I believe it would have been held at The Greek. But he/she makes good points about many teams having separate practice facilities, about The Roof being the smallest AE facility BY FAR, and about impressing recruits with our nice new arena.

Look, we are not filling up either gym. Attendance at Case is probably hovering somewhere around the 500 mark. While it's only marginally better at Agganis, it looks bad no matter where we play. Might as well give the fans a thrill by being lonely in a big-time arena.

And about the fans. Many fans are attached to The Roof, including me. They say it sounds louder in there because every is closer to the action. But they said the same thing when the hockey team moved from Walter Brown Arena to Agganis. And they were right to an extent, but I don't think anybody is complaining about it any more.

The bottom line is that if we have an A+ facility on campus, we should use it. Playing there more often should alleviate the comfort concerns of the players, and playing some lesser opponents there should get that winning percentage back on the right track. As far as attendance is concerned, it sucks right now no matter where we play. The only thing that can fix that is winning. And that has little to do with where we play the games.