The Big South Championship: A Showcase Not Only for a School, but an Arena

How would you like to experience something like March Madness? With the Big South Basketball Championship coming to High Point University, you'll be able to.

Once the regular season ends, and before the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament begins, each conference holds an internal tournament to crown a conference champion. And this year, the 2024 Hercules Tires Big South Men’s & Women’s Basketball Championships will be hosted at High Point University from March 6 to 10.

This will be the first time HPU hosts this combined tournament, which will be held in the Nido and Mariana Qubein Arena on campus. According to Big South Sports, HPU was chosen based on the amenities, popularity and technological capabilities the new arena boasts.

This will be a great opportunity for the arena, as it gives HPU a chance to show off its skills and expertise in hosting larger-scale games. 

The Nido and Mariana Qubein Arena opened its doors in 2021, and since then has held two games that have been broadcasted nationally on ESPNU.

When preparing for these large-scale games, the arena staff knows how to handle them. According to Caleb Bettis, the Assistant Athletic Director of Athletic Facility and Operations at HPU, those steps include more food prep, additional security throughout the arena, and additional staff operating metal detectors and ticket scanners. 

That extra work has paid off. Attendance at the arena ranks in the top three in the country for the past two seasons of operation for arenas with capacity of up to 5,000 people, so HPU students may be the majority of the attendees for the tournament.

Tickets for students will be sold at $5 with a valid student ID. This isn’t expensive compared to the standard ticket of $20, but since every other game has been free for students, it has the potential to turn some students away from the games. But according to a poll by Morning Consult, the ages of 18 to 34 have the most amount of fans of college basketball, with 29% being avid fans, and 20% being casual fans. So $5 probably won't do much in discouraging students from going.

What the school could do is cover those costs for an allotted number of tickets, and give them out to students in line to get into the stadium. Especially for HPU’s games in the tournament, depending on how far the team goes. Having a strong HPU turnout will give the arena more chances to improve engagement and experiment with new ways to electrify the crowd when the team needs it most. 

With departments like marketing, promotions and operations each only having two people, HPU has had success in hosting not only nationally broadcasted games, but in every other home game since. 

And these teams that run the arena are not who you would usually find running a stadium like this.

“A lot of us are younger professionals in the industry, so for us to be able to come here and operate at such a high level really sets us apart from others in the industry,” said Bettis.

With those smaller teams, being able to host a conference tournament can help that staff perfect how they operate a basketball game this season. A well-run stadium not only can show off the skills of its staff, but also give the team a leg up on the competition.

Having a home-court advantage, the staff can continue to use the same tactics, as well as new ones, to get crowds and players energized they’ve used before. According to a study from the Journal of Human Sport and Exercise, teams showed better decision-making, defense, three-point shooting rates and overall win/loss records compared to games played away.

With the Big South Championship only a few weeks away, the staff at the Nido and Mariana Qubein Arena will be working as hard as they can to provide the best experience not only for HPU fans, but other schools and Big South representatives in the hope to keep the tournament here at HPU.