Luke DeCock says turn back the clock, the Greensboro Coliseum is a Great Stop: “Greensboro Coliseum’s lure unquestionable”

from Luke DeCock at the Charlotte Observer and www.charlotteobserver.com:

Like any mid-major basketball coach in the Carolinas, Mike Dement tries to play as many nonconference games as possible against ACC schools. Unlike his peers, Dement can actually get them to come play on his home floor.

There are ACC teams that would yearn to have the kind of scheduling power UNC Greensboro has, but that’s what happens when that home floor is also the home of the ACC tournament. The Spartans host four ACC teams this season, including the only nonconference game Duke will play on an opponent’s home floor, on Dec. 29.

“We’ve tried to take advantage of that,” Dement said. “We may even have overstepped it a bit from strength-of-schedule standpoint. … Being in the Coliseum, for us, gives us a chance to attract those teams here.”

With encouragement from the late former ACC official Fred Barakat, who worked as a scheduling consultant for UNCG, two-thirds of the ACC has played a road game at UNCG since the Spartans made the Coliseum their full-time home court two years ago.

There are other ways of getting a game at the Coliseum, of course. North Carolina plays Texas there today, the second half of a series that began last season with the first basketball game played at the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium.

Texas coach Rick Barnes may be as excited as the Tar Heels to play in Greensboro. He has an enduring fondness for the building from growing up in Hickory and coaching at Clemson, and was delighted when the NCAA sent the Longhorns there two years ago for the first and second rounds.

“My team, I don’t know they even have an idea other than we’re getting ready to play another game,” Barnes said. “For me, I know the history and I have a great respect for the basketball played in that building and played in that state.”

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