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http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?id=2688653
Conference affiliation, more recruits keys for NJIT
By Kyle Whelliston
Special to ESPN.com
NEWARK, N.J. -- Central Avenue is truly a desolation row. Flickering streetlights dimly illuminate shuttered businesses and shattered glass from smashed car windows. The wind whips empty coffee cups and tabloid newspaper pages down the sidewalks, and a thin coat of greasy grime seems to coat everything. It's a scene that perpetuates all the negative historical images of the long-suffering city that lies in New York's long shadow.
But turn the corner and venture down a short alleyway, and it's an entirely different world. There's a series of futuristic glass and brick buildings, carefully-manicured tree groves and crisp red banners that line scrubbed-clean walkways. This is the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a 125-year-old center of higher learning and a first-year reclassifying member of the NCAA's Division I.
Near the center of this urban campus is the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Center, named after an NJIT basketball hero of the late 1940s and his wife. On Monday evening, a thin trickle of people entered through the front doors -- the toteboard outside said there was a game on, and $10 got you in.
On first look, the inside of the 1,000-seat Fleisher Center appears more like a racquetball court than a basketball arena. It's a rectangular space coated in white paint that's made brilliantly blinding by banks of fluorescent lights embedded in the 20-foot ceiling. Every sound is echoed and amplified, from the squeaks of sneakers to the alarm-clock buzzer to the crowd, which sits in a short set of retractable bleachers on one side of the court. The shoebox acoustics make the 400 or so in attendance sound more like 40,000, a deafening roar.
This particular night's opponents, the Lafayette Leopards of the Patriot League, appeared initially perplexed and disoriented by the strange atmosphere and the unknown opponent. NJIT, a school that wasn't even on the national basketball map just one short month ago, raced out to an early 18-12 lead. . . . (read more)
Go State!
Conference affiliation, more recruits keys for NJIT
By Kyle Whelliston
Special to ESPN.com
NEWARK, N.J. -- Central Avenue is truly a desolation row. Flickering streetlights dimly illuminate shuttered businesses and shattered glass from smashed car windows. The wind whips empty coffee cups and tabloid newspaper pages down the sidewalks, and a thin coat of greasy grime seems to coat everything. It's a scene that perpetuates all the negative historical images of the long-suffering city that lies in New York's long shadow.
But turn the corner and venture down a short alleyway, and it's an entirely different world. There's a series of futuristic glass and brick buildings, carefully-manicured tree groves and crisp red banners that line scrubbed-clean walkways. This is the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a 125-year-old center of higher learning and a first-year reclassifying member of the NCAA's Division I.
Near the center of this urban campus is the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Center, named after an NJIT basketball hero of the late 1940s and his wife. On Monday evening, a thin trickle of people entered through the front doors -- the toteboard outside said there was a game on, and $10 got you in.
On first look, the inside of the 1,000-seat Fleisher Center appears more like a racquetball court than a basketball arena. It's a rectangular space coated in white paint that's made brilliantly blinding by banks of fluorescent lights embedded in the 20-foot ceiling. Every sound is echoed and amplified, from the squeaks of sneakers to the alarm-clock buzzer to the crowd, which sits in a short set of retractable bleachers on one side of the court. The shoebox acoustics make the 400 or so in attendance sound more like 40,000, a deafening roar.
This particular night's opponents, the Lafayette Leopards of the Patriot League, appeared initially perplexed and disoriented by the strange atmosphere and the unknown opponent. NJIT, a school that wasn't even on the national basketball map just one short month ago, raced out to an early 18-12 lead. . . . (read more)
Go State!