UCLA finding an odd home across town
One quick glance up to the rafters at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion provides quite the history lesson.
11 national championship banners in men’s basketball hang from the rafters. Seven came in consecutive years from 1967-1973 under hall-of-fame coach John Wooden. It’s a total unmatched in college basketball – the next closest, Kentucky, has seven NCAA crowns.
But for the 2011-2012 season, those blue-and-gold banners have found a new home, about 15 miles east of hallowed Pauley Pavilion and the UCLA campus – the Los Angeles Sports Arena.
The Bruins have been forced to play elsewhere this winter as the result of ongoing renovations at Pauley Pavilion that are not scheduled to be completed until next fall.
They have played primarily at the Sports Arena, but also at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, Calif., and the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., as a part of the “Bruin Road Show,” a titled created by the school’s marketing department.
It’s a slightly odd predicament for the Bruins.
The Sports Arena served as the home venue for their crosstown rival, USC, from 1959-2006 and sits in the middle of Exposition Park – one block south from the Trojans’ University Park campus.
USC has also been in negotiations since September to obtain operational control of the 52-year-old facility, in addition to the adjacent Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
“We use it for tailgating,” USC coach Kevin O’Neill said following the Trojans’ 64-54 loss to the Bruins on Wednesday night – the first time they had played at the Sports Arena since a game against Oregon State on Feb. 25, 2006.
“We could have walked over, actually.”
But for UCLA fans, it has been a bit more of a trek this season.
Through 12 games at the Sports Arena, UCLA has averaged just 5,806 fans per contest. Seating capacity is at 16,161 for basketball. It’s a bit of a decline, sure, but by comparison, in 18 games at Pauley Pavilion last season, UCLA averaged 7,759 fans per game.
“Early on in the season, attendance was lower than it would have been if the team was playing in Pauley,” said Erick Peck, sports editor for UCLA’s student newspaper, the Daily Bruin. “But it's seemed to pick up recently, with more students taking advantage of the arranged shuttles. That being said, the factors of distance and traffic are definite deterrents for a lot of students.”
Because of that distance, there had been some concern for months that USC fans, alumni and students would flock to the arena for the second of the team’s two regular season matchups – the Bruins won the first meeting at the Galen Center by 19 points.
But the Trojans, who are just 6-21 on the year and have lost 14 of their last 15 games, are currently working their way through arguably their worst season in school history, cardinal-and-gold clad fans didn’t exactly flock to the nearby venue. Most appeared to just stay home.
Of the announced crowd of 9,064, at least 90 percent were sporting powdered blue apparel, providing a bit of a lift for UCLA in its 15th win of the season – at least according to coach Ben Howland.
“Our players were excited about the student body being here before the game,” he said. “I know they were enthused about that. It was important for us. We needed that."
UCLA has gone 8-4 this season, and though its proximity to USC might be a too close for many, it’s the Bruins’ home, nonetheless – at least for now.
Joey Kaufman is a Spring 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here.
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.