Wake up Mark Price, Dennis Scott and Matt Harpring.
The ghosts of their days in the Thrillerdome are welcomed into Georgia Tech’s new hoops home: McCamish Pavilion.
After a season spent more like a bunch of vagabonds than college basketball players, the Yellow Jackets are settling into their new digs on The Flats. They have a home arena once again, but the wonderfully creative part about the new phase of Georgia Tech basketball is how it connects with its past.
McCamish Pavilion is the old Alexander Memorial Coliseum with an extreme makeover. Try nearly $60 million of a new look. The exterior is nothing like the old building and the interior has been expanded by nearly 30,000 square feet.
One of the chief improvements is how open the Pavilion is. Fans on the concourse can still see the action on the court, even when line for refreshments or the restroom. And the $4 million audio and video package, which includes 50 HD televisions around the arena, quickly moves Georgia Tech to the front of the class in the ACC when it comes to technology and home basketball arenas.
Theater lighting throughout means the court will be illuminated, similar to Madison Square Garden in New York City. Georgia Tech has gone for a big-time look, and by all accounts has achieved that goal, and Mac Pavilion has quickly become a needed source of pride for the struggling program.
“It’s a beautiful place. It’s awesome,” said junior center Daniel Miller. “It’s our new house, and I think every one of us takes great pride in what we will now play in.”
The Yellow Jackets might be happy to call any facility their home given what they went through last season. After all, they played no true home games, splitting their “home” games between Philips Arena in downtown Atlanta and an arena an hour away in Gwinnett County.
Needless to say, it was quite taxing.
“There was no question that you have a tough game on the road and you come home and you know the next game is at home, there’s a comfort there. You know the routine,” second-year coach Brian Gregory said. “You know you’re on your home turf and someone’s gotta come in there, you know you have to protect it. We could never get that feeling, so it is going to be different this year.”
Gregory was hired with the task of restoring the Yellow Jackets back to the level of past teams that competed for ACC championships, played an exciting brand of basketball and that advanced in the NCAA Tournament. He chose to use the McCamish project as a metaphor for his program.
It was changing its face and morphing into one of the better facilities in the nation, so why not follow in those steps as a program?
“Many times we talked about how the progress in the building was also mirroring the progress we were making as a program,” the coach said. “That kept our guys energized. They knew that one day that building was going to get done and it was going to be theirs.”
New history will find the new building, but it may also get a hand from the ghosts that made the Thrillerdome, as it was nicknamed in the late 1980s because of the many memorable games it hosted.
The old court was broken into numerous pieces and can be found on the concourse in columns and beams. And most interestingly, the old roof remains.
Georgia Tech went to the NCAA Tournament in nine consecutive seasons from 1985-93, averaging 21 victories a season and finishing with just one losing record in the ACC, which was far more successful than it has been over the last decade.
“We have not forgotten the great tradition of the old Memorial Coliseum and the Thrillerdome,” Gregory said. “It’s still part of that.”
Gregory said the new facility should help in recruiting, but he’s not going to oversell a basketball arena to recruits. Georgia Tech has much more to offer, including that tradition the John Salleys, Bruce Dalrymples, Jon Barrys, Kenny Andersons and Jarrett Jacks left behind.
“Somebody’s always going to have a nicer locker room or a better practice facility,” Gregory said. “But, whenever someone builds something that’s the best two weeks, two weeks later that’s better, that’s just the way it is.
“So, what you have to make sure in recruiting is when a kid comes to your campus he leaves knowing he has that at his disposal. And with the new arena, you can cross that off.”
