President of SMG-Reliant Park Shea Guinn is interviewed about the renovations of transforming a football stadium into a basketball court Thursday evening in Houston. MSU plays Memphis at 9:57 p.m. Friday.
Houston — For all that has been said about Tom Izzo’s basketball teams playing like football players and his notorious “war drill” that features football pads, it’s only appropriate that the Spartans will play their Sweet 16 game in a football stadium this weekend.
MSU (27-8) takes on top-seed Memphis (35-1) in the NCAA Tournament regional semifinal at 9:57 p.m. tonight at Reliant Stadium in Houston.
It’s the first time the Spartans have played in such a venue since the famed “Basketbowl” game at Ford Field in Detroit, when the Spartans played Kentucky in front of a record college basketball crowd of 78,129 — a brainchild of Mark Hollis, who was named MSU’s athletics director in September.
“We get a chance to play in a retractable dome,” Izzo said.
“We’re thinking about taking the roof off to play outside; that’ll excite Hollis if nobody else. ... This site is beautiful. We’ve had a chance to play on a court like this one other time. Unfortunately, none of our players have, but I think they’ll enjoy it.”
The stadium is one part of Reliant Park, the combined facilities of Reliant Stadium, Reliant Arena, Reliant Center and Reliant Astrodome.
A couple thousand employees converted the facility this week from a rodeo facility to be used for basketball.
“We just finished with the three-week Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo with 72,000 people here for a concert on Saturday night,” SMG-Reliant Park President Shea Guinn said.
“It typically takes seven to 10 days to move that stuff out, and this is a three-week setup and we did it in 80 hours.”
Reliant Stadium, with a capacity of 71,500, is the only NFL stadium (home of the Houston Texans) that has natural grass and a retractable roof for indoor and outdoor events.
With Houston hosting a regional site in 2010 and the Final Four in 2011, Guinn said the San Antonio site this year would be the last in the “traditional” style of venue for the Final Four.
Ford Field is hosting a regional final this season and the Final Four next season, with the same intent of opening a football stadium for a basketball event.
“We count ourselves fortunate to be the next generation of the Final Four,” Guinn said.
On Thursday, there were curtains in the end-zone areas, partially restricting the audience to about 42,000.
There were extended rows of stadium-style seats from the sidelines all the way up to the media seating and the elevated floor.
“We play at Minnesota and they have an elevated floor so I think we have an edge with that,” junior guard Travis Walton said.
Either way, senior guard Drew Neitzel looked to the movie “Hoosiers” for a thought on playing in a new environment.
“The hoop is the same height and the court’s the same size,” he said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
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