Now the university is looking into when they will be able to conduct the experiment again.

“It was such a successful weekend,” said senior associate athletics director for facilities and sports management Greg Ianni. “We’ll see what we think our opportunities are … We just have to evaluate and see if this is something that can sustain itself, if we’re going to move additional matches in, if we’re going to move all of them in.”

Head coach Cathy George said following the two matches, she received more recruiting calls and e-mails than ever before.

“They saw the venue, they saw the support,” George said. “They saw the team play, they look to the future of the team and their growth. It’s an atmosphere that people want to play in front of. If you’re an athlete you’re saying, ‘I would like to play in front of that.’ That there’s a commitment from the university to make that happen is really where it starts.”

To move more games into Breslin, a lot of things have to come together perfectly, Ianni said.

“It’s a big building and you don’t want to put any games in there where you’re going to have 4,000 to 5,000 empty seats,” Ianni said. “We’re going to look at who we play, what the cost implications are — it costs more money for us to move over there than to play in Jenison (Field House). We’re going to evaluate with the Breslin staff on what dates are available and what dates they need to hold open, and dovetail it with the basketball schedules. There’s a lot of things you have to overlay to see where it fits into the whole process.”

Practice time is vital to playing in a new environment, especially when the venues are as drastically different as Breslin and Jenison, George said. The only other time MSU played in Breslin, the team got one practice in the arena. This time, the team held six practices there.

“You have to get used to the play in there, just as you do a smaller gym where you don’t get that extra float on the ball,” George said. “You want to be able to practice long enough to get that hook down. We did have the opportunity to do that which was nice.”

Being a fall sport, volleyball had the luxury of Breslin being more open than it would be in the winter, when men’s and women’s basketball use the floor for practice and games. The team was also able to use the women’s basketball locker room, something that wouldn’t be available if the whole season was played at Breslin.

“Volleyball season isn’t over until the end of November, so you still have an overlap there that you have to deal with,” Ianni said. “Then of course Breslin’s trying to schedule their events in there.”

If they played at Breslin, the Spartans would be competing in one of the conference’s premier volleyball venues, George said.

“Sometimes you go into a basketball arena and it’s so large and it’s so away from the court it presents an issue,” George said.

“But this is so right there. The people were right there, right on the court and it really does work well with volleyball.”

Regardless of the decision, the experience was memorable, George said.

“It was like Cinderella,” George said. “It was an awesome experience. It was a wonderful venue.”