For almost as long as the Bryce Jordan Center has been the home of Penn State men’s and women’s basketball, there has long been the passing curiosity if a more basketball-centric arena ought to be built.
The Jordan Center is cavernous on bad nights and a shell of what it could be when the crowds do arrive. Built largely with concerts in mind, it has taken mountain-moving efforts at times for simple renovations and upgrades to take place. The why is a combination of fundraising, administrative support and the logistics of Penn State’s Auxiliary and Business Services, not the athletic department, operating the arena. Nevertheless, more than a few head coaches have been frustrated by the pace at which progress has taken place.
To a certain extent, the notion that Penn State should leave its otherwise fully functional 15,000 seat arena for something smaller, or at least more basketball friendly, is more daydreaming than anything else. As Penn State looks to begin on the opening stages of a multi-year renovation of Beaver Stadium, starting brand new on a basketball facility is nothing more than a nice thought for later.
“It’s not a shouldn’t, or can’t. I think it’s evaluating the urgent needs and where we need to be,” Penn State Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Pat Kraft told StateCollege.com during a recent interview. “And then getting a real understanding from coaches of what they need and how we move forward for each program. Like everyone’s different, right? So a lot of our projects right now touch every single athlete. Everything I just mentioned to you earlier, all of our peers have those things.”
Of course just because there aren’t plans on the table for Penn State basketball to be leaving the Jordan Center doesn’t mean there aren’t plans to improve the program. On the tail end of locker room, video room and weight room improvements, it’s not as though the two programs are totally behind the times — but that will only stay true for so long.
“Now we have a practice facility; that is fine,” Kraft said. “But I do think it’s moved up the list to figure out, OK, what do we need to do? But I also don’t think it’s go and build new. Is there a way to work within the structure that we have at the BJC to give us what we need? You’ve got to do a lot of studies — it goes back to financing and raising the money. It’s a topic that I was just discussing yesterday. So there’s a lot of other things that we’re working on that we have down the road. We’re not finished when we’re done with these [current projects]. These are just the initial, I believe, urgent needs that we have to attack right now.”
