There’s No Home for USF
The aging Sun Dome was well overdue for a makeover. It will get a full fledge renovation instead. After being in service for 30 years, the USF Arena & Convocation Center, aka the Sun Dome, needed to be rebuilt. In June the school approved the renovation of the Sun Dome and it should bode well for the future of South Florida basketball. A new scoreboard and areas for concessions and restrooms will be nice for fans and recruits alike and that is never a bad thing.
However, the present is a more pressing concern since the project is already underway and will not be completed until the spring of 2012. That leaves the Bulls without a home for this season. There are certainly some options in the Tampa Bay area for USF to play, but if they have to get too far away from campus, their home court advantage will virtually disappear. For a team that has struggled in a tough basketball conference, losing that little advantage could be a big deal. The college fan base may not travel too well just to watch their team get blown out by Pittsburgh, Villanova or Syracuse.
Coach Stan Heath and his Bulls usually have to fight hard to win any conference games. Last year they won just three and two of them were at home. All seven of their other wins were at the friendly confines of the Sun Dome, including some quality wins over Texas Tech, VCU and Auburn. If the home crowd is not as invigorating at another location, those close wins against Texas Tech and VCU may have been losses.
South Florida will struggle in conference play again this year with or without the Sun Dome, but they need every advantage they can get if they want to creep up the Big East standings and not end up in 15th place ahead of just lowly DePaul.
Read an in-depth men's basketball preview for this team
