Good Bye 'Tad Pad' - Hello 'The Pavilion': Rebels open new basketball arena against
By Parrish Alford
Daily Journal
OXFORD, MS
There is a game to be played for Ole Miss this evening, and the opponent is not the Globetrotters or their patsies, the Washington Generals.
However, it’s a celebratory weekend for the Rebels as they move into their new home, the 9,500-seat, $96.5 million Pavilion at Ole Miss.
Doors open tonight at 6:30 with an honorary jump ball at 7:30 and tipoff against Alabama at 8 p.m.
The game will be televised by ESPNU, and the SEC Network will have live reports from The Pavilion throughout the day.
Kennedy was hired at Ole Miss in the spring of 2006, and Alabama will mark his 320th game as head coach.
“I feel like it’s my first game,” he said. “That’s the truth. I’m just super excited like ‘Wow, I can’t believe this is actually happening.’ I want to infuse that into our team.”
The Rebels (10-3, 0-1 SEC) will play a conference opponent after having been in the building themselves only three times, for a shootaround and two practices.
Ole Miss had won seven straight games before losing decisively 83-61 at No. 9 Kentucky.
The Rebels shot just 23.1 percent in the first half when the game was largely decided as the Wildcats took a 46-22 lead at the break.
Ole Miss is next-to-last in the SEC in 3-point field goal percentage and overall field goal percentage.
Alabama (9-3) will be playing its first SEC game. The Crimson Tide, under first-year coach Avery Johnson, has neutral-site wins against ranked foes Wichita State and Notre Dame. Alabama has lost at Dayton, on a neutral floor to Xavier and at home against Oregon.
Kennedy downplays the idea of breaking in a new home gym with an SEC opponent. The fans in the stands, most of them, will be cheering for the Rebels, he says.
Kennedy has been low-key when questioned about moving into a new arena … until this week.
Monday of this week was only the third time he’d been inside the Pavilion.
“I came in when they were just beginning and you could kind of see the scope of it. Then I came back a month or two ago when it was starting to take shape,” he said. “But when they had the court set up, the baskets up, the lights going … it was surreal to me. The vision has come to reality.”
A dime for every time Kennedy’s been asked about a new arena’s impact on recruiting would probably cover his salary for a season.
Now he’s feeling that impact much more.
“It gives us an opportunity now to say, ‘OK, what’s the excuse now?’ We’ve got everything that you need to be successful. This is a complete game-changer,” he said.
parrish.alford@journalinc.com
Twitter: @parrishalford