I too was very pleased with what I saw yesterday. It will be a fun place to watch Billiken hoops. The locker rooms are a vast improvement over West Pine. I missed the weight room, but I understand it to is impressive. But you always ask at a new building, are there enough restrooms to avoid a lengthy wait at half time. Minor issue.

I’m somewhat worried about parking, and egress out of garages and back onto the highways, but no need to worry about that until November. MetroLink would be nice, but it is somewhat of a hike from the station to the Arena. Any ideas floating around about a possible bus from the station to the gym?

You mentioned Mitchell’s ankle. I thought his injury was to his wrist. So he was pretty banged up last year. I assume this played a lot into his lack of PT.

Well, I am not sure how amenable you are to intelligent thought on the matter but seeing as how you brought it up it probably needs to be addressed.

You said: “[Chaifetz Arena]will give SLU a home-court advantage.” Please explain how this differs from the current home-court advantage. You seem to be saying that the Chafe will be a better place to see a game and have nice acoustics. Fair enough and likely very true. But please relate that your statement to the “home-court advantage.”

The “home-court advantage” is the difference between how a team plays on the road and how a team plays at home. It can be measured statistically when adjusted for the strength of the teams one plays. Now if you look at this year HCA you will SLU enjoyed a small one (in other years it was larger). OK, so maybe it will be larger in the Chafe.

But if you look across teams and the facilities they play in and factor in the types of crowds the have you will not see ANY positive relationship between nice facilities, new facilities, on-campus facilities, raucous crowds, rowdy students, louder bands, etc. and their HCA. In fact you may see the opposite (Presbyterian, Utah St. and Denver enjoyed the best HCA’s this year). Locally, Missouri State and Southern Ill enjoyed huge HCA’s while Illinois actually had a Home Court Disadvantage. GW had the biggest HCA in the A-10 this year and Fordham the smallest yet they both play in small student-filled gyms. Part of this is because it is looking over one year but you can look at this over longer periods and you will not see any aspect of the facility carrying much weight in the HCA.

This is simply because the HCA and “the game experience” are two different things and should be kept that way by intelligent fans and intelligent writers. As best as I can tell the HCA seems to be largely a function of officiating–that is, there is no statistical evidence (although I have not seen data from recent D-1 years so this may have changed) that a team shoots or rebounds or steals or assists or blocks better at home. What they do seem to have is more possessions which is probably the result of winning more 50/50 out of bounds calls and getting more fouls called on the visitors.

Write all you want about the improved subjective experience, the better scoreboard, the better acoustics, the better location, the better impression with recruits, etc. Just do not make any claims of greater HCA because I have been looking at those numbers for about a dozen years and I really have not seen any pattern but randomness.

Kwyjibo, while I don’t doubt your data (I know you’re good with those numbers), I think there are other things that can be looked at when making statements such as “SLU will actually have a home court advantage.” First and foremost, SLU will have a building to call their own. At Chaifetz, they will play in an arena that they will actually have the opportunity to visit between games. They will have locker rooms in the building that will be theirs and not just some lockers that they use temporarily during games. They will play in an arena that will be adorned with things actually related to their own school and basketball program. They will play in an arena to which they can walk from their apartments, rather than drive (albeit a short drive). This place will be an actual home.

Again, I’m not saying that the Chaifetz will necessarily translate automatically to more wins on the court, nor am I saying that any of the benefits of this building will directly lead to more wins. Still, there are things that I, along with many other people view as greatly beneficial. Now Kwyjibo, if I remember correctly from Billikens.com, you’re from somewhere in New England, so I’m not sure when the last time you were at a Billikens game at Kiel/Savvis/Scottrade Center. Anyway, that facility holds somewhere around 20,000 people. SLU tends to draw around 9,000, as Tom mentioned above. Even on a better night where SLU draws 10,000+, you’re still looking at a little more than a half full arena. In a place that large, a half-full crowd can actually look and feel small. Plus, you don’t get as much noise in a cavern of a place like Scottrade, unless it is pretty close to full.

The size of Scottrade made it a great place for fans of visiting teams to come in large numbers. Not more than what SLU had, but still enough to make me wonder if I had been transported to another school’s arena. Hopefully, with attendance being close to capacity, we will see much less of that in the future. Not saying that those things lead to more or less wins on the court, but it still make for a better SLU basketball atmosphere.

Chaifetz Arena looks and sounds awesome. Thanks for all the updates, Tom.

It will be a great place to watch SLU Basketball, and I will make sure to go to a few games next season. I’m excited - as are many others - so hopefully with the help of a competitive basketball team, St. Louis will be buzzing about the Billikens. This team has a fantastic new arena, and it should be packed almost every night. It holds 10,600 - and SLU should be able to draw crowds around 10,000 - so the new arena will be full, and loud too. It will be a great atmosphere.

With some new recruits, hopefully Majerus can just put a better team on the court than what we saw in 07-08. So I’m expecting a much more enjoyable season.

Finally the Billikens have their own arena, and it’s brand new. Can’t wait to check it out at a game next season! Should help with recruiting too… adds a lot of positives to the school.

Go Billikens!

Great work over the season Tom. This new arena is great for the school. None of us students liked taking buses to Scottrade, but the Chaif is right here, in fact i can see it from my Marchetti Balcony. My only concern is the sound. I was floor level for the Globetrotters game last night, and sat half way up for the Riverwar all star game saturday, and you couldn’t understand what the announcer was saying at either place. people sitting by me made similar complaints. With that said, its a great place to watch a game and should boost fan support. It’s about time for some spirit on this campus. By the way, I went to the Riverwar game today and the SLU recruits were decent, but anything from impressive.

I guess it depends on how you want to quantify home-court advantage. Good teams have home court advantages, but as someone who has seen hundreds of games in Pauley Pavilion, I doubt it gives UCLA any significant edge. UCLA would have won most of those games over the years playing in a laundromat.

People at Xavier will eagerly tell you how much having the Cintas Center on campus has helped their program. They fill the place up all the time, it’s a great fan environment, it’s appealing to players who are considering where to go. (Lesson learned after the Riverwar game: high school kids are very impressed by the building. College kids too.) That’s a home-court advantage.

Scottrade had a number of disadvantages. SLU never practiced there, the students never showed up (except the Xavier game; national TV will do that), and the fact there’s a hockey rink moved many of the seats far away. There will be an awful lot of students (presumably) a lot closer to the action making a lot more noise. That’s got to help in some way. I think SLU will be a better team next season playing in Chaifetz, though the vast difference in the team will make it hard to measure.

As for the audio, it certainly needed some work at the dedication ceremony. I didn’t notice it as much on Saturday when I was seated at floor level. Presumably, that’s one of the things they’ll work out.

On a side note, a few days before the opening, I’m told they had what they called The Big Flush in Chaifetz. They deployed staff around the building and flushed all the toilets at once to check the water pressure. It apparently passed.