Within a Division I college basketball program, the names change.
Every year, new players come in to take the spots of the ones who left. Coaches come and go, too, benefactors or victims of a results-oriented business.
In a sport with constant change, it’s often the buildings that house the sport that become representatives of their schools. Across the country, there are dozens of arenas synonymous with the team that plays there. There’s Rupp Arena at the University of Kentucky, Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium and Allen Fieldhouse at the University of Kansas. They are names at least as legendary as the people who have played there.
Each of these buildings has its quirks, something that sets it apart and gives the home team a unique advantage. Although it doesn’t receive much fanfare, a gym in Mercer County could be counted among them.
Turning 55 this year, Alumni Gymnasium is the oldest building on Rider University’s Lawrence campus. It is also one of the oldest facilities still in use for Division I basketball. Legendary University of Notre Dame men’s basketball coach Digger Phelps, now a commentator for ESPN, played his college ball for Rider in Alumni Gym’s first years. Phelps then launched his coaching career there in 1963 as a graduate assistant. More recently, crowds packed the gym to catch a glimpse of current Sacramento Kings big man Jason Thompson, a 2008 Rider graduate.
Befitting of its age, Alumni Gym has history outside of sports—Count Basie, Eric Clapton, Ralph Nader and George Carlin have all appeared there. The university’s wrestling and women’s volleyball teams also compete at the gym. But the facility’s charm has always gone hand-in-hand with basketball, and for good reason.
Holding a maximum of 1,650 people, it is the ninth-smallest Division I basketball facility in the country. Renovations, completed last May, replaced Alumni Gym’s heating system—original to the building—and added a drop ceiling with recessed lighting, a new sound system and newly branded walls. But the gym mostly remains the same, which means it’s among the more intimate places to watch a Division I basketball game. Spectators can hear every bounce of the ball and—if the players and coaches aren’t careful—every word spoken on the floor.
On the bench, players’ feet are inches away from the court. Press row is wedged underneath a basket, enveloped by the Rider bench on one side and a stage behind it. Opposite the benches, fans are less than three feet from the court. There is no way to walk around the court on game days, and no way to easily leave the stands once game action starts. The gym’s “concession stand” is a folding table with snacks in the lobby of the adjoining Student Recreation Center.
Game day at Alumni Gym is—in a word—cozy.
“You can literally hear the guys breathing and talking,” former Rider University men’s basketball coach Kevin Bannon said. “You can count on one or two hands places like that in America. You don’t just get to see that level of basketball that intimately. I love when I bring someone there for the first time. They are just blown away.”
For comparison, it would take 21 sellout crowds at Alumni Gym to best the largest single-game attendance at Syracuse University’s Carrier Dome, the country’s largest on-campus college arena. In March 2010, 34,616 people watched the Orange play Villanova. Rider’s men’s basketball team plays 14 games at home this season, and won’t hit that mark for the year.
The gym’s size clearly presents some challenges. Rider University men’s basketball head coach Kevin Baggett spent much of the Broncs’ Jan. 20 game against Iona out on the court, hovering near the 3-poing line. In most arenas, this would be against the rules. But the referees never mentioned it. They understood, it seemed, that the coach’s presence on the floor was mainly due to necessity.
There’s no room for a coach’s box, no place to roam the sideline. Baggett either had to sit in his seat—good luck getting a Divison I basketball coach to do that—or he had to step onto the playing surface.
But Baggett said the gym and the atmosphere that comes with it have been good for recruiting. Even with less-than-capacity crowds, noise carries well in the gym. Alumni Gym can be a loud place, especially when the student section—known as the Broncs’ Zoo—becomes vocal.
“It’s small, but our fans are on top of the game,” Baggett said. “When you get it going and packed, it’s a tough place to play. It’s momentum. Our fans get after the other team, and our team thrives on that. It’s really a zoo in there when the fans get going.”
Baggett said Alumni Gym was a particularly tough place for Rider’s opponents to play during current NBA player Thompson’s senior season in 2007-08. Fans eager to see the star athlete packed the gym throughout the winter. Perhaps the only thing higher than the demand for Broncs’ tickets was the temperature in the gym.
“It was hot in there,” Baggett said. “You had to dress accordingly.”
Support remains high, especially during Rider’s participation in ESPN’s Tip-Off Marathon. Fans packed Alumni Gym the last two years for Rider’s nationally televised games, even though the Broncs played at 6 a.m.
Alumni Gym also plays a key part in recruiting for Rider’s women’s basketball program, head coach Lynn Milligan said. Milligan played for Rider in the 1990s, and has been around the gym as a player, coach and fan for three decades. She said the facility is a perfect home for her program.
“It has the home feel, particularly for women’s basketball,” Milligan said. “We’ve played at Syracuse. We played at Pitt this year. It’s difficult because we’re not selling out those gyms. It feels empty. You have the bench and then 25 yards away are the stands. When we play at home, you get the feel for the game. You can feel the crowd’s excitement. We have a nice group of supporters, and you can hear them.”
Alumni Gym hadn’t always elicited such feelings. When Bannon arrived as head coach at Rider in 1988, there was little interest in the basketball team, he said. His coaching staff knew they had to take advantage of Alumni Gym in order to build a successful program on and off the court.
The athletic department geared the marketing of the men’s basketball team toward the fraternities at Rider in hopes their members would fill the stands and create a wild atmosphere in Alumni Gym. Bannon said he wanted to transform a facility he called “not your typical Division I gym” into a madhouse that would intimidate visiting teams. The result was the Broncs’ Zoo.
“We took a negative and made it a positive,” Bannon said. “We made it into a circus atmosphere.”
There isn’t a more circus-like moment in Alumni Gym’s history than the culmination of Bannon’s program-building effort. Rider fans call it “The Shot,” and without Alumni Gym, Bannon said he isn’t sure it would have happened.
With four seconds remaining and the Broncs trailing Wagner College by a point in the March 9, 1993 Northeast Conference championship game, Rider’s Darrick Suber drove the length of the floor and made a buzzer-beating jumper from the foul line to send the Broncs to the NCAA Tournament. Most of the standing-room-only crowd stormed the court, celebrating as the Wagner coaches and players tried to fend their way through the mayhem. Rider’s players and coaches chose to join the party.
Rider went on to win the NEC title and earn a NCAA Tournament bid again in 1994. But, 20 years later, “The Shot” remains as the most memorable moment in Alumni Gym’s history.
“Everybody says they were there that day,” Bannon said. “The gym fits 2,000 people, and 6,000 people were there. It has this whole folklore.”
This year’s men’s basketball team may have a chance to add to the gym’s history.
With its 67-62 win against Iona Jan. 20, Rider moved a game out of first place in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. As the regular season entered its final month, Rider still had hope to earn the program’s first regular season conference championship since 2008. A strong final month would secure a good seed for the Broncs in March’s conference tournament. The winner of the conference tournament receives the MAAC’s automatic bid into the 68-team NCAA Tournament. A Rider win there would mean the program’s fourth NCAA Tournament bid, its first since 1994.
The Broncs have five games at Alumni Gym in February, including the home finale Feb. 23 against a to-be-announced opponent. The game is part of the Sears Bracketbuster series.
Rider athletic director Don Harnum has announced his department’s intention to eventually build a new, larger basketball arena on campus, and that’s a project other prominent people, such as Bannon, have supported. Changing times mandate a more modern facility with more amenities. Such is life at the top level of college athletics.
But Alumni Gym still stands for now, and it’s a venue that has quietly earned a place among the college basketball landmarks.
“It’s one of those places you should see a game at,” Milligan said. “It’s a great place to see a college basketball game. In this area, it’s really only Princeton and Rider and then you have to go down to Philly for Division I basketball. Once they go [to a game at Rider], I think they’ll be back.”
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