Arena #124: Schar Center - Elon vs. Canisius

After spending the prior evening in a crowd of over 20,000 in Chapel Hill, it was quite the change to spend Sunday afternoon in front of a crowd of maybe 600 or 700 folks at the brand new Schar Center at Elon University.  Elon is another stunningly built campus in the South just like prior stops at places like Liberty and Belmont where you can tell the tens of thousands of dollars these students pay in tuition are definitely being invested in the campus.  While the building and arena itself were beautiful from having been just constructed, the crowd left something to be desired, though I understand it was a Sunday afternoon game against a team from a thousand miles away with the students on winter break.  The few people that were at this game, though, were treated to an outstanding, back-and-forth contest between the home Phoenix and the visiting Canisius Golden Griffins (holy mythical birds in this one!).  Elon took the lead into halftime, but the Golden Griffins played just better enough in the second half to pull out a 1 point win in the final possessions.

The beautiful new Schar Center on the Elon University campus

Perfect sized seating area for a team like Elon, though it was sparsely populated for today's game

Opening tip between the Phoenix and the Golden Griffins

Canisius attacking the basket with a strong contest by an Elon defender