It was announced yesterday evening that Cincinnati’s basketball facilities were getting ready for an upgrade. With the help of $1.3 million of private donations, spearheaded by the Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin, there will be expanded training facilites, a player’s lounge with a station providing small meals, a locker room, a classroom or meeting room with tiered seats, a coaches’ office and a lounge for recruits and their families. This will be downstairs where the visiting locker rooms are currently.
If you are having trouble picturing what this will look like in your head, take a look at the rendering up top. People will be able to wonder aimlessly in style.
This renovation is solely for the players and coaches. The article went out of it’s way to say that this has nothing to do with where the future home of Bearcats basketball will be, either in a renovated 5/3 Arena or US Bank Arena.
This is another keeping up with the Joneses move by Cincinnati. Don’t believe only me when I say that, believe Mick Cronin.
“You’ve got to look at what’s going on around you,” he said. “Memphis is building a new practice facility with dining halls and locker rooms. So is UConn. In our league, it’s Cincinnati, Memphis and UConn. They’re both building whole new practice facilities with new locker rooms, with new eating areas.
“You look around the three-state area that we live in and there’s some serious commitment to college basketball. You’ve got to be able to keep up facility-wise.”
Some of you may be wondering if this was a priority moving forward, it was:
“This is a priority need for the program moving forward,” said Brendan Fouracre, senior associate athletic director for facilities & operations.
Since this project won’t be finished before the 2015-16 season, it’s kind of fair to wonder if this is something that will help a lot of ways for the current players, or if it’s something that will help for recruiting.
“It’s going to really help us in a lot of ways, but obviously recruiting is a big thing.”
The current men’s locker room will in turn be used by the volleyball team and other Olympic sports squads, but that’s not part of this so who cares about them.
Cincinnati is in a place where they have no choice but to keep everything top notch. They are playing a weird game where they have to keep track with the Memphis’ and Connecticut’s of the world, while also keeping an ever expanding eye on the rest of the nation as they look for a way out of the American. There could be people in the Cincinnati upper crust who wonder if they were too slow to make moves for upgrading Nippert Stadium and upgrading the facilities. Could that have been a reason why they were passed over in expansion? Who’s to say? What Cincinnati can’t do now is look worse than a Memphis or Connecticut. They’ve put the time and money in to change the perception of Cincinnati athletics. Let’s hope it pays off in every aspect.
Photo via Cincinnati.com in linked article
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