Cowboys (Football) Stadium for Texas vs. UNC Hoops

The new Dallas Cowboys' football stadium hosted a college basketball game today between defending NCAA men's champion North Carolina and up-and-coming hoops power Texas. The court design was pretty conventional, as shown in this Houston Chronicle slide show. The Cowboys-style stars in the corners added a nice touch, though.

[Previously, I said the game was at Reliant Stadium, home to the NFL's Houston Texans. I have edited the posting to correct this error.]
***

On a separate matter, I noticed in some ESPN highlights of today's West Virginia at Cleveland State game that the Vikings have a pretty elaborate center-court logo. Here's a screen capture from ESPN360.com's archived video of the game.

Shellac Attack!

Here are two schools that use shellac in opposite ways to darken sections of their respective courts and set up a contrast with the lighter wood. Michigan's floor is predominantly light, but has a darker area between the key and the three-point arc. Alabama's is just the opposite: predominantly an enhanced shade of wood, with the area between the key and arc lighter than the rest.

PAC-10 on UCLA Pauley Pavilion Floor

Matt Rachmiel notified me about a "PAC-10" wordmark that appears new on the floor of UCLA's Pauley Pavilion. It'll be interesting to see if the wordmark is permanent, or was just used for the Kansas game in the Big 12-Pac 10 Hardwood Series. Here's the original source for the video capture.

Neat Center-Court Design from Texas High School

Via Matt Rachmiel: If you go to today's Uni Watch entry, then scroll down to "News Ticker," you'll see an item about the center-court decoration for the Kerrville Tivy High (Texas) Antlers. Click on the link there to see a very intriguing design.

The Palestra: Penn's Classic Gym

Matt Rachmiel sent me a picture of himself (taken by Jeremy Fishman) from a recent game at the Palestra. Located on the University of Pennsylvania ("Penn") campus in Philadelphia, the Palestra is one of the classic arenas in college basketball. It hosts games not only of the host school, which is in the Ivy League, but also selected games involving other Philly schools who, along with Penn, make up a collective known as the Big 5. Having previously sported painted-in keys, the Palestra has switched in recent years to empty ones.
UPDATE: August 2013: I (Alan Reifman) recently had a chance to visit Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. I took some photos on campus, including of the Palestra. These are available on my college-campuses website.

Original Allen Fieldhouse Center Court

Jeremy Boden, one of our Texas Tech graduate students, recently attended an academic conference at the University of Kansas (KU). While there, he took a bunch of photographs of the campus, including some in the school's athletic hall of fame. The latter houses a number of Jayhawk athletic artifacts, including the original center-court hardwood (above) from legendary Allen Fieldhouse, which opened in 1955. The KU court has featured a few different looks in recent decades, including one dominated by the cartoonish Jayhawk mascot (which is cute in its own right). Allen Fieldhouse, by the way, has recently undergone renovation to improve amenities for the fans.

Puerto Rico Tip-Off Tournament

I'm not crazy about how the circle at the top of the key was designed at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico, home of the Puerto Rico Tip-Off college basketball tournament (the screen capture is from the Dayton-Georgia Tech game, the larger set of highlights of which can be viewed here).

For one thing, many college courts no longer even depict the semi-circle inside the free-throw line (i.e., the key is a solid rectangle, as seen in this example), because the held-ball/alternating-possession rule has eliminated the possibility of a jump-ball in the free-throw circle. Also, I find a white free-throw stripe on a light wood floor hard to discern, sometimes.

On the other hand, the unusual key give the Puerto Rico court some uniqueness, which is sadly missing from a lot of other courts.