Rupp Arena hosted a match seventeen years ago between the current and former Kentucky basketball coaches.
March Madness saw Billy Gillispie’s Texas A&M Aggies overcome Rick Pitino’s Louisville Cardinals, with a trip to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 on the line.
The following season, Gillispie would take over as head coach of Kentucky on the same court where the game was played. With the exception of sporadic subtle NCAA branding, it appeared to be just another Rupp Arena home game. The iconic UK logo at the heart of the court. On the blue baselines, large white letters read “Kentucky” and “Wildcats.” Close to the free throw line is the SEC logo. The real Cats on the court were the only thing lacking.
When Pitino returned his Cardinals to Rupp six years later to start their 2013 national championship run, little had changed.
The home of Kentucky basketball had turned totally red for the occasion — U of L fans making the short drive to pack their rival’s building for the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament — and, jarring a sight as that was, it wasn’t the only difference.
The Rupp Arena court was unrecognizable. That’s because it wasn’t the Rupp Arena court.
There was no UK logo at center court. No blue and white underneath the baskets.
This time around, the baselines and sidelines were black. At midcourt, the NCAA logo. And other than an interlocking UK discreetly placed at the top of each baseline and “Rupp Arena” in blue lettering beneath it, there was no presence related to the Wildcats at all.
Obviously, that’s what the NCAA wanted.
It was around this time that the playing surfaces of March Madness shifted entirely from the unique home courts of the host schools to the uniformity of today’s NCAA Tournament.
L.J. Wright, the NCAA director of men’s basketball championships, talked to the Herald-Leader about the process of transforming tournament sites into what fans now see when they tune into the games and the reasoning for going in this direction.
Wright said the idea of universal courts came from the late Tom Jernstedt, who oversaw the NCAA Tournament for nearly 40 years and is widely credited with turning March Madness into the sensation it is today.
Jernstedt, he said, wanted uniformity. There were also player safety concerns at the time with the branding decals used by the NCAA being placed within the playing lines.
The solution? Entirely new courts.
“Tom Jernstedt really wanted consistency,” Wright said. “And he wanted people — when you turn the TV on — to recognize that, ‘Hey, this is March Madness. This is the NCAA championship.’”
Diehard college basketball fans would be tuning in anyway. To help attract the casuals — particularly those who might’ve filled out a bracket for work or among a group of friends — it could help if someone flipping through the channels saw something that made it clear what they were watching.
“You want them to recognize, ‘Hey, this is one of the games that I had in my bracket. So I want to stop and watch.’ It’s also just brand recognition,” Wright said. “We’re an association, and while Kentucky is a great institution and a part of our membership, it’s not a Kentucky home game. It’s the NCAA championship. And so you want that brand recognition in front of everyone’s eyeballs.”
NEW NCAA COURTS EVERY YEAR?
It’s a common misconception that the NCAA commissions brand new basketball courts every year for its marquee event. That’s not entirely the case.
The courts used for the first- and second-round games — played at eight locations around the country — are actually holdovers from previous seasons, even though they look different from year to year, while the regionals and Final Four do typically get new editions for every season.
Take the court Kentucky played on in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, as an example. That surface had a March Madness logo at center court with various shades of wood-staining making up the rest of the playing area. The sidelines and baselines were green and blue, and Greensboro — the site of UK’s games last season — was spelled in white lettering at the top of the court.
Across the country, different sites had the same designs but with unique color combinations.
Eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed that those same color combos had been used on courts in previous NCAA tournaments. That’s because they were actually the same courts. Everything within the playing area matched up exactly. Only the sites at the top of the court were different, and that lettering was actually a decal affixed to the floor.
In addition to the branding, player safety — and uniformity of the actual surface — was a consideration by the NCAA in its decision to go this route. Wright pointed out that having control over the courts themselves gave NCAA officials the peace of mind that they’d overseen the process from start to finish, ensuring that the surfaces would be consistent across the tournament, as opposed to relying on the host arena’s regular court.
Different venues have different tenants and event calendars, which means some courts might rarely get taken down and put back together again. Some might be switched in and out on a regular basis. The ages and conditions of tournament courts in the past varied.
“You want a safe situation for the student-athletes,” Wright said. “And a consistent playing surface for the student-athletes. So that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
ALL NEW COURTS IN 2024
While the NCAA Tournament does not typically get new courts for the opening rounds, this year will be an exception.
For both the men’s and women’s tournaments, every first-week playing surface in 2024 will be a new one.
James Gabour, the events project manager at Connor Sports — the company that builds the basketball courts for March Madness — said the NCAA had been using the previous first-week courts for about 15 years. While nothing changed on the playing surface from year to year in some cases, there were modifications made for other tournaments.
In the instances where those modifications were made — whether it be a new paint job or a redrawing of the 3-point line due to rule changes — the court was sanded down. You can only do that so many times.
“You can get about three sandings out of a court, so if we would have a look change or the 3-point line moves — when those types of things happened, you want the court looking good,” Wright said. “So you sand it down and you repaint it.”
The plan will be to use this year’s brand new courts for the opening-round sites well into the future. Obviously, they have to go somewhere during the year in between tournaments. For storage, the NCAA works with Connor Sports, which is based in Michigan but has relationships with storage warehouses all over the country. The warehouses are climate controlled, and Connor tries to keep the courts spread out and closer to future tournament sites to keep the shipping costs down.
Wright said the courts for the “First Four” games in Dayton are 112 feet long to fit into the arena there. Most first-week courts are 116 feet long. Regional courts, according to Wright, are typically 120 feet long because those games are often played in newer venues with more floor space to accommodate extra runoff on both ends of the playing surface. All courts are 60 feet wide with a 5-foot apron on each side.
The playing area on a regulation NCAA court is 94 feet by 50 feet.
By comparison, the Final Four courts are huge.
That event is now played in football stadiums — in fact, the last time it took place in a traditional basketball arena was 1996, when UK won the NCAA title in Meadowlands Arena — and this year’s Final Four court in Phoenix will be 140 feet by 70 feet, according to Gabour.
The Final Four court is on a deck built 29 inches in the air, and the extra width of the playing surface gives more runoff room for players as they chase loose balls on the sidelines.
How much do the courts cost? “A little over $100,000 a court,” Wright said of the first-week floors, noting that the NCAA gets “a friendly deal” from Connor since the organization buys so many of them at once.
By comparison, the new Kentucky basketball court at Rupp Arena cost a little more than $200,000. Both Wright and Gabour said that the prices can fluctuate quite a bit based on the design of the court, especially the visuals on the surface itself. The new Rupp Arena court, which was actually recalled in December after just one game and will be reinstalled for next season, featured an intricate, contrasting wood stain outline of the state of Kentucky that stretched for more than half of the playing surface.
“The paint job — depending on what you’re doing and what the finish is going to be — that can play into that cost, for sure,” Wright said. “Especially a thing like that is going to cost you quite a bit more.”
Gabour mentioned Oregon’s home basketball court — anyone who’s seen it on television can probably picture it immediately — and, while he didn’t disclose the price of that one, used it as an example of how complex those designs can be.
All of Connor’s courts are produced in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and constructed of American maple. Gabour said the men’s Final Four court weighs about 50,000-60,000 pounds and consists of 381 panels that are 4 feet by 7 feet and interlock with each other. It takes two trucks to ship the court to its destination.
The women’s Final Four court, built for a traditional basketball venue, is 60 feet by 120 feet and weighs around 37,000 pounds.
KENTUCKY SETS A TREND
So what happens to the old courts when the NCAA gets new ones?
Gabour said that Connor Sports, which retains ownership of the regional and Final Four courts every year, sells them off following the tournament. He said the regional courts are typically already sold before the actual games are played on them. Those courts get sent to one of Connor’s partners first to be sanded down — with all NCAA insignia removed — and repainted before being shipped to the buyer.
The Final Four courts are always offered to the winning school first. It’s rare that the national champion doesn’t purchase the playing surface.
Miriam Segar, senior associate athletics director at LSU, told the Herald-Leader that the university obtained the court that the Tigers women’s basketball team won last year’s national championship on. Some pieces of the court were chopped up and made into bottle openers, desk decorations and other objects that can now be purchased by LSU fans. Segar said part of the court is now displayed in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, where fans can take photos next to it.
The UConn men’s basketball team, which has won five national titles in the past 25 years and three since 2011, apparently didn’t have cause to buy another full basketball court, leading to an interesting outcome for last season’s Final Four surface.
Gabour said that UConn purchased only the portion that featured the midcourt logo. As a result, the NCAA will actually reuse last season’s Final Four court this year. To make that work, the folks at Connor Sports will simply build replacement panels and insert them into the middle of the floor that was used last season in Houston.
“It’s actually a pretty easy process to pop them in,” Gabour said. “You just have to make sure that they’re built to the same specs as before. And you’re able to use it again.”
Different schools have done different things with their championship courts. Wright noted that Michigan State bought the 2000 championship court and actually installed it at the Breslin Center, where it served as the home floor for the Spartans for nearly two decades. A few years ago, Michigan State got a new court and sold pieces of the old one for $50 apiece.
Some schools have used their title court as a practice floor. Others place prominent pieces on campus, like the LSU women’s team did with its court from last year.
Both Wright and Gabour said Kentucky was a trend-setter in what to do with a championship court.
After UK won the NCAA title in 2012, the Wildcats obtained the playing surface from the Final Four in New Orleans and cut custom-sized pieces to fit into its locker room at Rupp Arena, which was going through a major renovation that offseason.
More than half of that court was installed in various places in the locker room, with one free throw lane serving as the entrance and another sizable piece worked into a display that features a large photo on one wall showing the celebration scene in New Orleans that night.
“I’ve seen that one. That one’s awesome,” Gabour said. “And each school that buys it, they kind of decide to do different things with it. Sometimes they’ll keep the whole court. Or they’ll take out the center logo and hang it. They’ll cut it up into pieces and sell it to alumni. I’ve seen them turned into desks. You just take a big slab of the wood from the court and turn it into a desk. We’ve seen a lot of different things over the years.”
That type of innovation, apparently, began in Lexington.
“Kentucky, in many ways, really kind of started doing some of that. They kind of set the bar, if you will,” Wright said. “And other schools started thinking, ‘Oh, yeah. We can get creative with some of this,’ if they didn’t want to use it as their floor, or their practice floor. From a recruiting standpoint, it’s pretty cool when you walk in there. It’s impressive.”
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