Dumbest things at Alamo Dome

[FreeBall]

The dumbest thing that I saw at the Alamodome was the location of the lines for the post-match autograph sessions. They had these lines in the same area of the concourse that fans needed to go through to access the bathrooms and concession stands, and also to exit the building. This created an unnecessary gridlock situation on that side of the facility. What made it especially dumb was the fact that there were major portions of the concourse that were not even being used for the event.

[ugopher]

My thoughts (which aren't worth much)

NU's 0-2 timeout - I didn't see anything wrong with it. Depending on what Cook saw, it may have just been a a chance to tell the team just to settle down.

Seating - horrilble!!! Our seats were on the third row, at the very end of the "pull down section". Had we stayed there we would not have been able to see any of the game. I hope the final four is never held in a dome again. People were just too far from the court or had bad site lines. I am looking forward to the championship being held at Qwest Center next year where the seating should be much better.

Overall atmosphere - this could have been one of the greatest atmosphere's of all time given the amount of people NE brought. However, their cheering was totally gobbled up by the high ceiling and the other half of the dome. Terrible.

Concessions - bad. They had one person working the ice cream line on Thursday night and about 25 people in line. And the overall variety of food was poor.

Overall - San Antonio will never get a NFL franchise in that building.

[BearClause]

ugopher said:

Seating - horrilble!!! Our seats were on the third row, at the very end of the "pull down section". Had we stayed there we would not have been able to see any of the game. I hope the final four is never held in a dome again. People were just too far from the court or had bad site lines. I am looking forward to the championship being held at Qwest Center next year where the seating should be much better.

From a practical point of view, I don't know why they don't go back to a campus site. Cox Arena at San Diego State actually worked quite well. It wasn't too large, but was large enough for about 12,000 people. I liked the facility better than Long Beach last year.

I suppose they want media access, and there was a full-size practice court behind the curtain. Arco Arena in Sacramento is hosting the FF in 2007. They don't have room for another practice court in the arena, but the Sacramento Kings has a practice facility right in the parking lot. I would think that use of the practice facility would have been part of the pitch to host.

[lilred]

ruffda said:

chance said:

I'm not going to try to second guess a coach who knows WAY more about volleyball than i do, but i think they should have experimented with a 5-1 in some of their easy matches, just to have that option.

Here's what he loses:

1) blocking
2) a middle (remember his setters are subbing for his middles)
3) hitting (backrow and front row)
4) defense

Now, he could have started a game with a setter in for an opposite, but then he's stuck with that for that whole game.

Cook had all summer and early fall to figure out what worked best for his personnel. I think, short of bringing in Holloway (and she was not healthy when that was an option), that he did the best he could.

Yeah it sucks when the best he could do was beat Stanford, Hawaii, Penn St, Missouri, Texas, Minnesota, Ohio St, UCLA, Florida, Pepperdine and Santa Clara with a lone loss to Texas and finish national runner up to a great Washington team.

All in all the season was still a good one. I have posted numerous posts stating that I felt Washington was the better team even though I am a Husker, due mainly to the setting and BR defense. I am disappointed in a sweep but #%&** happens. On to next year!

[lilred]

ugopher said:

My thoughts (which aren't worth much)

NU's 0-2 timeout - I didn't see anything wrong with it. Depending on what Cook saw, it may have just been a a chance to tell the team just to settle down.

Seating - horrilble!!! Our seats were on the third row, at the very end of the "pull down section". Had we stayed there we would not have been able to see any of the game. I hope the final four is never held in a dome again. People were just too far from the court or had bad site lines. I am looking forward to the championship being held at Qwest Center next year where the seating should be much better.

Overall atmosphere - this could have been one of the greatest atmosphere's of all time given the amount of people NE brought. However, their cheering was totally gobbled up by the high ceiling and the other half of the dome. Terrible.

Concessions - bad. They had one person working the ice cream line on Thursday night and about 25 people in line. And the overall variety of food was poor.

Overall - San Antonio will never get a NFL franchise in that building.

Could you buy alcohol? Just wondering cause when we were down there for the Big 12 Title game in 2000 we still could. But then another buddy went down to the Alamo Bowl and said you couldn't in the arena.

Also the seating looked horrible as far as I could tell. Course I wasn't there so its hard to say. Just looked that way IMO.

[Chance]

i'm still confused as to why this was in a dome instead of an arena. Did they expect more than 20,000 or so?

[BearClause]

chance said:

i'm still confused as to why this was in a dome instead of an arena. Did they expect more than 20,000 or so?

Basically there has to be a bid. The NCAA loves venues with good media/meeting facilities, and the Alamodome probably has enough space for lots of extra stuff. The Alamodome was probably also going to be empty at the time (before the Saints relocated). Sure they had room for the practice court and extensive locker rooms, but I guess a decent spectator expeience wasn't exactly their primary concern as long as it showed up OK on TV.

I'm not sure about why Arco Arena was used for a bid. The FF would be right in the middle of the NBA season.

[Half full or Half Empty]

For Arco, they just need it from Tuesday morning through Saturday night, plus or minus. If you follow Western NBA teams, you know they take pretty decent road trips, longer than the Eastern teams (because the Eastern cities are closer together, and it's easier to hit four of them at once). So the Kings just need to be on a 2 or 3 game road trip that week.

For Domes, it seemed everyone was too far from the action, and the hugeness of the dome made the ball sound quiet and far away -- I don't think you could really appreciate the power or skills that well, even from the good seats. I don't recall the final four ever drawing more than about 11 or 12,000 (this year's final was 8,482, even with the 4,000 or so from Nebraska); I can't imagine why they'd want to go to anything more than a 12-18,000 seat NBA/NHL/big-time college area anytime soon, or at least until the presentation on TV drew enough popularity to figure you'd get more attendance than that.

On the time out -- Pavan got aced on the first play, and on the second play, they set a 2 to Houghtelling, and she got stuffed. I think it was fairly well expected that Washington would serve at Pavan, and it was well understood that Washington used a bunched swing blocking system that is more effective at blocking a 2 than maybe anything else. So Nebraska should have been prepared to expect Pavan to get served, and should have been prepared to get blocked on the 2-balls (and they came out of the TO and ran a fast set to the antenna, which is what is most effective against a bunched block, and might not have set another 2 ball all night, so perhaps the coaches DID need to remind Griffin not to set that play, but it's odd that the first ball you set the entire match would be something you should have thought better of, since you had two days to prepare). So in the very brief time the ball was in play (serve-shank, and serve-pass-set-hit-block), I don't know what the coaching staff might have seen that could have surprised them, that they needed to address.

Nebraska was the favorite after being ranked #1 all year long, and after being #1 most of last year, then adding Griffin & Larson. When you call TO only 30 seconds into the match, it's hard for that not to affect your confidence, and the opponent's. John Wooden used to say that he never wanted to be the first one to call timeout because to him it showed weakness, and in a talk at the coaches convention the day before, Hugh McCutheon and Bill Neville felt one of the key factors in the match would be who blinked first. A TO at 2-0 says to the players that, we've been preparing for this moment all year long, but obviously not well enough, and it says to the other team that the juggernaut across the net, that's bigger and stronger than you at nearly every spot, seems to be in some amount of disarray, and that gives you confidence. While Nebraska made a quick surge out of the timeout, the final is a long match, and over the long haul, UW seemed to be more confident and more comfortable in the match, and NE seemed to be less so. So, I don't know what was said in the TO, and I know Coach Cook is a much better coach that I'll ever be, but I had to second-guess the decision when he called TO and still am second-guessing.

NE has a great coaching staff, and Coach Cook has an NCAA title and 2 (or 3?) national Coach of the Year awards. But, by my count, NE had the best talent in the country in 3 of the last 5 years and has no titles to show for that stretch (in '01, when they added Nancy Metcalf to almost all the players who won the title the year before, and last year, and this year when they were ranked #1 wire-to-wire, and not including '02 when they were #2 in the preseason poll).

So they have a great coaching staff, amazing players, the best fans in the country (or second-best to Hawaii), but get upset by Stanford in the semis in '01, get upset at home in the regional finals in '02 & '04, and get upset in the final in '05. Is it a run of bad luck, or some sort of trend? I went back and found some quotes from Coach Cook; you can feel free to try to match the quote to the year, if you'd like. And to me, it sort of sounds like a trend:

"Their servers were better than our passers in the crunch. Their servers stayed aggressive when the game was on the line, and that shows a great amount of confidence. They were constantly putting pressure on our passers, and that can make you timid."

"We didn't execute at the end of game one, and we didn't pass well."

"Maybe we were too wound up, but we didn't execute well on the side out... [Our opponent]is not a good serving team, we've seen better serving teams. We just didn't get [our setter] at the net in position. Sometimes we were anxious, tight."

"It was a tough way to end the year. We didn’t play with our best effort. We made too many errors against a good team... You can’t give up runs of points like we did. Our servers got tentative, and we weren’t scoring. We were giving up runs and trying to get side outs."

"It was a good match, obviously we didn't take advantage of our opportunities to win and [they] did... I thought their libero did a great job and that was probably the difference in the match... What's disappointing is that we didn't take advantage of our opportunity at the end to win it and gave it to [them]."

"We certainly had chances and didn’t take advantage, and we weren’t very smooth tonight... Sometimes in big matches you get a little tentative and start serving the ball right down the middle of the court... We weren’t stressing them with our serve like we needed to, part of that is being a little tight and not putting pressure on them, we just let them off the hook too many times."

I know that 99% of the D-I teams in the country would love to "fail" the way Nebraska has over the last few years. They have great coaches and outstanding players, and one of the top programs in the country. They also have built up more fan support for our sport in the state than any other program, at any other time in history, and that's awesome.

Stanford was in this situation in the mid-'80s with a bunch of Final Fours and no titles, but they eventually got it figured out. Penn State had a string of near misses in the mid-to-late '90s before they finally won their title. Nebraska and Coach Cook, obviously, have had success; what will it take for them to be back on top again? And are they learning from past years, or are they just going out and doing the same things over and over? They did make it to the final for the first time since 2000. But what do they need to take it to the next, and ultimate, level?

[Pirate VB Fan]

1/2Full:

A couple of picky things: Washington was ranked #1 for 7 weeks last year, so Nebraska was not ranked #1 for "most" of last year. We only lost the ranking (and the National Championship) because of major injuires to Sanja and then Christal. I never understood this year why Nebraska was favoured over Washington. We finished higher the previous year even with the injuries and had basically everyone back. We should have been ranked #1 at the start of the year, not Nebraska. It should have come as a surprise to no one that we won the title.

Last year NEB lost in the regional finals, but not at home, it was in Louisville.

I had originally read the quote about their opponent not being a good serving team, etc as pertaining to Washington. I am not sure why you put that in there because I doubt seriously Cook would make that comment about UW.

[ugopher]

lilred said:

ugopher said:

quote]

Could you buy alcohol? Just wondering cause when we were down there for the Big 12 Title game in 2000 we still could. But then another buddy went down to the Alamo Bowl and said you couldn't in the arena.

Also the seating looked horrible as far as I could tell. Course I wasn't there so its hard to say. Just looked that way IMO.

No, alcohol was not available.

The seating was horrible. Even the closest seats were far from the action and it almost had a feeling that that the players were playing in a vacuum.

That said, I think the city of SA did a fine job. The weather wasn't the best but it looks like if the championship were held this weekend the weather would be great. The Riverwalk was a great place to spend an evening.

I think the Alamodome's proximity to the Riverwalk along with the hotels were the primary reason for using that venue vs. the SBC.