After a 990-day break due to COVID, I was finally able to restart Mission 351 with a visit to the Redhawk Center on the campus of Seattle University for Arena #171. Since the Redhawk Center was the only Division I arena I had yet to visit in the state of Washington, it was imperative to get to a game there while out in the Pacific Northwest for the 2022 Phil Knight Invitational/Legacy tournaments over Thanksgiving weekend. Unfortunately, the schedule makers didn't help me out much by making the only Seattle home game for the week and a half before Thanksgiving a Thanksgiving Eve matchup with Division III Pacific Lutheran. I make it a goal to avoid non-D1 games as much as possible, but given the timing, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to get this venue checked off the list (especially knowing Seattle plays a number of their conference games downtown at the home of the NHL's Seattle Kraken, Climate Pledge Arena).
Seattle University is located just a couple miles east of what I would consider "Downtown Seattle" though it's surprisingly difficult to access via public transit. As such, a drive to campus was required. Parking was a bit challenging to find given the arena's location and the lack of clear parking directions even though lots were supposedly defined on the athletic department's website. The outside of the arena isn't anything to write home about, but once inside, it's actually pretty nice for a low major Division I school. Redhawk Center is one of the smallest home courts in all of Division I basketball, holding a miniscule 999 people. I've been to smaller venues though... (Arena #127 - Hodge Center at USC Upstate for example as the smallest venue in Division I). The arena only has about 9 rows of seats on each sideline and about 5 rows of seats behind one of the baskets to constitute the student section, though on this evening the student section was pretty empty.
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| Main entrance to the Redhawk Center |
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| Love a good city skyline on a basketball court |
The on-court action wasn't much to write home about on this night either as Pacific Lutheran was clearly overmatched as expected. The Redhawks were able to get to the basket with ease and were hot from the perimeter as well in building a sizable lead at the half. The start of the second half wasn't much better for Pacific Lutheran and with a 2 hour drive to Portland still to come, I decided to head out at the under 12 timeout as there was no way Pacific Lutheran was coming back in this one, which turned out to be accurate in a post-game check of the final score.
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| The Redhawks with some tough defense on a Pacific Lutheran drive |
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