Will we ever have a real homecourt advantage?

The powers that be did us a favor by making the Jack Stephens facility to be of limited seating. At least it is not a cavern like Alltel was. If you get 3500 people in the Jack and spread them around pretty well, it has a nice "full" feeling.

One of the most enjoyable things to witness in college basketball is when a program that has been down for a long time begins to get rolling and the fans start getting genuinely excited again. We are witnessing that happening at Rutgers these days.

For perspective, Rutgers last went to the NCAA tournament in 1991, so it would have been 29 years if they had gone this season, which seemed likely. That is a full generation, meaning there are a lot of New Jerseyites who cannot remember when Rutgers was relevant in basketball. BUT you give a bunch of college-age kids a reason to get excited, and they are happy to oblige. That is especially true in a blue collar state when the team they are rooting for is a blue collar team that makes it living on defense and rebounding. And there are a lot of old-timers around who remember when Rutgers went to the Final Four in 1976.

The Scarlet Knights play their home games at the Rutgers Athletic Center (affectionately known as "The RAC"). This season it became one of the toughest spots in the country for opponents to play  The Knights were 18-1 at home, and that included wins over #20 Penn State, #22 Seton Hall, #23 Illinois, and #9 Maryland.

The reported seating capacity of the RAC is 8000, and Rutgers reported an average home attendance this season of 6764, with the last ten games being sellouts, after it became obvious that the Knights were legit. I hope we will get to witness that at the Jack one of these days - when we have a REAL homecourt advantage and opposing teams dread coming to Little Rock.