Blobophiles will remember me whining a couple of weeks ago about the sorry state of the class basketball tourney in Indiana, and wondering why the tournament never played any big venues until the state finals.
The 2A and 3A semistates at Warsaw prompted this. The event drew an overflow crowd and fans actually had to be turned away from the doors, and I figured, if demand was that great, why not play it in Memorial Coliseum, where it easily might have drawn 7,000?
Turns out my whine was before its time.
Talked to Coliseum general manager Randy Brown today about the NCAA hockey regional bid, and I raised this same point with him. When was the last time the Coliseum and the IHSAA talked about maybe putting a semistate back on the big stage?
"Tuesday," Brown said.
Then he told me the IHSAA and Coliseum were having "ongoing" talks, and had been for about three years. It's all very preliminary, he cautioned, but one of the concepts discussed was making the Coliseum the site for a mega-semistate -- i.e., putting more than two semistate games in the building on the same day.
Brown figures it would be a winning deal for all parties, and I concur. Anyone who was at Warsaw could agree.
-- Ben Smith
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