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RIP Hoosier (RCA) Dome

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Bob Cook, Dec 20, 2008.

  1. linotype

    linotype Well-Known Member

    My only in-person memory of the Dome came in the first round of the 2003 NCAA tournament. March 20, 2003 -- the day after the opening salvos were launched in Iraq, certainly making for an odd day to give a crap about watching hoops. Nevertheless, I drove all night and walked into the dome at around 11:30 a.m. for the first game -- Holy Cross-Marquette in the opener of Dwyane Wade's run to the Final Four.

    After that, it was Southern Illinois-Mizzou, and then Western Kentucky-Illinois and UW-Milwaukee-Notre Dame at night. Those four games were decided by a total of 10 points -- I don't have the record book handy, but that has to at least approach the tournament record for closest combined margin of victory for one site in an opening round. Easily the tightest foursome of first-round games I've witnessed.
     
  2. OnTheRiver

    OnTheRiver Active Member

    The Damon Bailey title run his senior year in HS was the biggest referee rig-job of all time.
     
  3. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    Uhhh ... yeah. Concord should've won that game.
     
  4. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Fuck! How could I forget the UCLA-Princeton game. I was there for that too.
     
  5. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    I would concur that the Dome, along with stealing the Colts from Baltimore, put Indianapolis on the sports map.

    Where are the high school finals going to be held now? Conseco Fieldhouse? Lucas Oil Stadium?
     
  6. I still haven't recovered from the Richmond-Jeff game in 92.
     
  7. I remember Bailey shooting about 100 free throws during the semistate in the Haute that year.
     
  8. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    does rig-job really get a hyphen?
     
  9. franticscribe

    franticscribe Well-Known Member

    They've been at Conseco for some time now. Class basketball doesn't draw enough fans to make having the finals in a football stadium make any sense.
     
  10. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    I was a rookie at UPI (about to die in Indianapolis) during Bailey's run, and we got people complaining all the time whenever we did the high school roundup about refs being in the tank for Bailey, with a guy from Brownstown declaring, "We got homered in our own gym!"

    Back to the Dome, its main legacy is giving other cities the idea to build stadiums and arenas before a team ever existed. Indianapolis was third place in the two-team '76 NFL expansion because it had no stadium plan in place. The Dome got built in the same flurry that built most of the city's amateur and Olympic sports facilities, and the idea was that by attaching it to the convention center (also a novel idea), between amateur events and conventions it could justify its existence even if no NFL team ever came. But it did.

    The Trop in St. Petersburg was the first dome to follow on spec, and just about got the White Sox as a result. I believe the folks there once hired the guy who ran the Hoosier Dome to run that dome in hopes of drawing the same luck. (Except that St. Petersburg didn't attach the dome to a convention center, and put it in a part of town that's still generally avoided.) The Alamodome in San Antonio (which also didn't attach to the convention center, instead being stuck across the freeway from it), the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, the Sprint arena in Kansas City -- these are the type of built-on-a-wing-and-a-prayer facilities the Dome hath wrought.
     
  11. OnTheRiver

    OnTheRiver Active Member

    Hell, I think Evansville Bosse would've beaten them earlier in the tourney if not for crooked zebras.
     
  12. But, hey, the girls finals will be at Lucas Oil this year. Scheduling conflicts at Conseco and Hinkle (Butler refusing to give up the weekend in case they're hosting the conference tourney) make that the case. I still think they should have moved them to New Castle, Ball State or someplace...hell Southport. The idea of seeing 568 people for the Class A girls game in a football stadium is amusing.

    The boys weekend is still a good time. Let's not go down this road too much (because it's been beaten to death more times than the BCS and T.O. combined), but the switch has certainly hurt attendance. But there are still very good crowds, usually between 16-18,000 for the 3A/4A games. The buzz has been killed at the sectional level, which was always where the old tourney was special in my opinion.

    I was also there for that weekend. You're right. There weren't any games that really jumped out as great, stop the tournament kind of games. But all six games in the dome that weekend were super competitive and none were decided until the final moments. Most people hate Notre Dame and its football fans, but that was the weekend I came to despise those that follow the Fighting Irish basketball program.

    Two years later, the dome hosted first round games again and the Saturday session brought the (if I recall correctly) the largest non-Final Four NCAA tournament crowd ever. Illinois, on its way to the finals, was a huge draw and Illini fans, realizing their team was No. 1, had bought tickets for that regional months in advance. At the same time, Kentucky got placed there too. That night's doubleheader, Illinois/Nevada and Kentucky/Cincinnati, had more people in the far reaches of the upper deck than the '06 Final Four did a year later.

    And, as for Richmond, their entire '92 state title run was improbable. The semi-state win at Hinkle against Ben Davis may have been the best game of the whole bunch. A good point guard, a future Big Ten standout at the two and a couple of drug dealers rounding out the front court go a long way in Indiana High School hoops. Glory days of the NCC back then, too. I was at the '92 Anderson Regional, in a sold out Wigwam, watching another team of questionable characters (Anderson) hold off Muncie Central with Bonzi Wells.
     
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