For my second game on Saturday, I drove across town in Baton
Rouge to visit Arena #169, the F.G. Clark Center on the campus of Southern
University, for a Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) matchup between the
Southern Jaguars and the top team in the conference, the Prairie View A&M
Panthers. This was my first-ever visit
to a SWAC conference school and my first-ever SWAC conference contest, meaning
I’ve been to a game at a school in all but 2 of the NCAA Division 1 conferences
(America East and Northeast remain). The
F.G. Clark Center was a pretty non-descript building from the outside and my
thoughts didn’t improve much upon getting inside. The arena holds probably 8,000 people, but,
on this day, the entire upper level was roped off and even the lower bowl was
probably no more than 3/4 full for Senior Day.
Honestly, this was probably a good thing though as even with the smaller
crowd on hand, the concourses were cramped to navigate around and there was
only 1 concession stand open for the entire crowd, which made that section of
the concourse almost impossible to navigate through.
I came into this game expecting it to be fairly competitive
given this was a matchup of the top two teams in the conference, but honestly I
was most excited to see and hear the band performances throughout the game
knowing how well known and honored HBCU bands are. I will say the band lived up to my
expectations, and was probably the highlight of my visit by far, but the game
was certainly a bit of a disappointment even though it was quite
competitive. The quality of the on-court
action was honestly not very good and lead to some very inconsistent action
that had very little flow. Fouls piled
up on both teams through the game and led to the game taking forever to
play. As I still had to head back to New
Orleans for the evening, and the game had already crossed the 2-hour mark, I
chose to leave the game with about 5 minutes left and Southern up 7
points. It would turn out that the game
would ultimately go to overtime, but Southern would pull out a 9-point win.
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| Outside of the F.G. Clark Center at Southern University |
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| View of the multipurpose seating area of the F.G. Clark Center |
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| Opening tip for some SWAC action between Southern and Prairie View A&M |
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| The famous Southern University band jamming out during a media timeout |
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