On Saturday night, NC State played host to Savannah State for a non-conference basketball game. I mean a non-conference scrimmage, really. Isn’t that what most of the cup-cake non-conference games are? Only Savannah State got to play in storied Reynolds Coliseum. In fact, they got to see Sidney Lowe walk the sidelines at Reynolds for the first time in his young head coaching career. Just the thought of that kind of gives me chills. Imagine how it must have been for Sid.

More after the jump…

I’m not going to give you a recap of the game. If you want that, go here. What I am going to give you is my own personal view of Reynolds Coliseum, and why I think NC State is hurting itself by not playing more games there. Or at least playing different games there. Look, I know the reasons why they play in the ESA, but I think there are ways to counter act them to a degree.

My proposal, play two games a year at Reynolds. Both against your Big Four siblings. Rotate each year which teams it will be, with each team sitting out once every three years. The players and coaches would love it, and I am not just talking about NC State’s players. If you do not think that the other Big Four teams would like nothing more than to ruin a game at Reynolds for us, you are kidding yourself.

There is the slight problem of seating capacity. A game against one of these teams should sell out the ESA pretty easily, so you know Reynolds would be maxed out completely. So what do you do to help with the ticket allotment? Season ticket holders get first dibs, obviously. If there are more season ticket holders than Reynolds will fill, then it goes to a rotation schedule for tickets as well. Lost ticket revenue? Jack up the price of these games by $15 bucks or so. I do not think that this is unfair to the ticket holder, as long as they are given the option to opt out of these games.

Concessions will be an issue, as the more people there are, the more popcorn gets consumed. I can’t help you there. You can’t just jack up the price of popcorn and sodas. Somewhere, you have to give a little, and this is one of those places.

Parking is not an issue. There was plenty of parking at Reynolds in the old days, and with road improvements it will only be easier then ever to get in and out of campus. The only thing lost here is revenue from the count of cars being less. Again, you may have to take a loss here, but you could probably get away with a $2 or $3 increase.

Why even bother with any of this? That is an easy one for me. Reynolds is a legend in NC State athletics. The atmosphere in the Big Barn was something that the ESA will never be able to get a grasp on. It’s not because of anything that they can change, either. It’s because of the closeness to the court. The closeness to the rafters as well to the ghosts in those rafters. You see, when NC State played at Reynolds, it was not like anything that the ESA knows about (Hurricanes excluded of course).

Can you imagine how this could effect recruiting as well? As much as the kids want to be on center stage, with 19,000 people watching them play, they also want to be in an old school gym sometimes. They would still be nationally televised games (ESPN would eat this up with a spoon, kid you not. Can you imagine the hype machine in full effect?). I can not think of a single downside in the recruiting aspect, and for the actual Wolfpack players I can think of tons of reasons why it would be great.

Up until the 90’s, Reynolds was part of NC State’s culture of winning. Now it’s just a reminiscent thought of days long gone. With the program showing real signs of being able to turn the corner and make it back into the upper echelon of the ACC and nation’s elite teams, there would never be a better time to start bottling up the emotions of Reynolds and selling them abroad. Reynolds Coliseum was one of NC State’s biggest assets in it’s storied basketball program’s past. If it were used correctly it could be the defining factor in the restoration of it’s future.