Grading IBA

[Speed]

Oh, and I didn't get frisked.... some of you must look 'shady' ;-)

or you weren't a specimen those losers wanted to feel. It was hard to conceal my "excitement" for the game. It was too cold to unzip my coat for absolutely no reason what-so-ever.

[pogo]

I thought the pre game music just a little too modern for my taste ie hip hop/rap. The different food venues were good, the transparent shot clocks were cool, my seats were better than I expected after looking at the location on line. I like sitting around the people I normally sit with at CKA and I did meet several nice, different people at IBA. Had some cross words with a man that sat in front of me at IBA which has never happened at CKA. Lets just say his and my expectations of accepted behavior during particular portions of the game was at polar opposites.

[Speed]

IBA will tweak a lot of these problems, I think. Hopefully they can get a better scoreboard, internet reception, etc. My cell never connected, but I wasn't really there to talk on my cell phone. :-)

But I wanted my phone for stats as they were nonexistent.

[WuDrWu]

There were good and bad from this evening.

When I toured the place 15 months ago (or thereabouts) one of things I noticed early on was the large amount of access points or routers around the concourse. Now, I have no idea if they are working or if they are even still there.

How can you have a building where there is no wireless signal? Can someone get an explanation on this? Some people NEED to be in contact on a consistent basis. It's almost as if it is intentional and I noticed this at the very first Thunder game....no service at all. I don't understand this and it's going to have to be addressed and explained.

My seats were much worse than at the Chuck and I wasn't on the aisle. Thank goodness there wasn't a tall person directly in front of me as they would have been added to either the PUP or IR list at the end of the game from all the head wounds inflicted by my knees.

Memo to random old and or mean people that attend games (or any other ass that sits on the aisle):

It is a bonus to have an aisle seat. Part of the cost is that you have to get up sometimes for people to get by...DEAL WITH IT or DON'T SIT ON THE AISLE!

I sit on the aisle and am all to happy to get up from my seat 1000 times if needed. It is the way it is. The next old woman that questions me or someone in my group with a comment like "that's 3 times you know" is going to get a hip fractured. Shut your hole or stay home.

Concession selection is okay....good but not great. I loved the QT vendor in KC where you could buy a drink for $1. At least you had 1 low price option. Prices are high, but not crazy in most cases. BUT $7 for dippin' dots????? That's the last time my daughter does that....$7????????

Come on folks......

They have to work on the stats thing. It's unacceptable as of now. You could tell Don Hall was struggling with information as well.

Parking was okay. Again, I parked a lot further away than I do at CKA but is was acceptable and easy to get in and out, although in fairness, I get there early and I stay late.

I was told the patdowns were for the premium seating entrances....I don't know anything more than that but come on. I mean I don't want to be blown up but seriously?

There are plenty of things I would change....a few things that MUST be changed, but I still think we should find a way to play 1 game there a year, maybe 2. Probably 1.

[1972Shocker]

I would like to play 3 games a year in IBA. One top notch non-conference opponent and two NCAA tournament games.

[ShoxFan7]

I'm upper center court at Koch. Was placed in the upper corner at IBA but was surprised that it wasn't all that bad from there. I thought overall it was an A- with my complaints, which have been mentioned several times, would be the scoreboard not having individual stats & when I went to check the stats on my phone I couldn’t access the internet on my phone. Besides that I really enjoyed it. Plus, parking was very easy to get in and out especially considering most stayed to the end. I think IBA is something for Wichita to be proud of & they did a great job tonight considering it was their first basketball game in the arena!

[notquiteBWing]

I entered around 5:30 when they let the students in. I endured a minor pat down of my pockets, then 3 feet later i was checked again.
I think he must have not noticed me getting checked the first time...

redundancy....

I sat about 4 rows back in the student section. and the view was ... well... nonexistent. with no decline in front of me, I wasn't really able to watch the game in front of me. I couldn't see much through 4 rows of people. I watched the screen above. (unless their replays were going on during live play)

Being on the floor was awesome though. It was electric. one of the best games I can remember going to. Seeing the crowd from ground level was a beautiful sight. 14k shocker fans cheering late in the second half = bliss.

I thought the crowd was lively and loud. I agree that had this type of game had been played at CKA... the decibel level would have been pretty substantial.

I didn't buy any food. As I am cheap and don't enjoy spending ludicris amounts of money on items that normally cost 1/3 that price.
Food sure looked good though.

I'm not a drinker, but I must admit I enjoyed watchin more than a few semi drunk college kids dancing around constantly. :)

Someone mentioned this before, but I too found it funny that verizon sponsered something and was imploring us to text a number. HAH. it was near impossible to get any signal from my verizon phone.

Scoreboard was a travesty.

pregame music? i hate most hip hop music with a passion, but i realize it's the culture we live in and it's the same at Koch, so I live with it.



the atmosphere was just so cool. for me anyway, on the floor that is.
I really enjoyed the game. one of the best i've ever experienced. and im sorry to all who couldn't be there.

on another note, did anyone see or hear about what the tulsa players had on their jerseys? i didn't notice during the game, but the had patches indicating the missouri valley and how many times they won the valley! I guess they were trying to heat up the rivalry.
One player told me that gregg used that as a motivator for the team pregame or at halftime lol.

[RipEmUpShox]

At the arena.... The sound Goes up, so it your up top you hear the students yelling really loudly.
But at the roundhouse the sound goes down onto the court where it is supposed too...
Please keep us in Koch, so that we dont have the type of atmosphere they do at creighton home games at the Quiet Center...

CKA is a basketball arena, one of the few left in the valley.

[RipEmUpShox]

IBA will tweak a lot of these problems, I think. Hopefully they can get a better scoreboard, internet reception, etc. My cell never connected, but I wasn't really there to talk on my cell phone. :-)

But I wanted my phone for stats as they were nonexistent.

Same here! and no scoreboard... it said there was free public wifi to connect to but it didnt work.
Useless.
It sucks having no idea how many points anyone has.

[ShockerKhan]

Quick note on the seating at INB compared to CKA...there are at least 3 maybe 4 sections of seating which IBA controls for ALL events.
Many of these are held by people with ALL-EVENT passes. What happens to the rest I am not sure. This is one reason why
the ticket office at WSU had to move people to the corners and behind the basket who would normally sit between the end lines.
All though my seats were much higher the view was still just fine. The only problem I had was difficulty telling if shots actually went into the
basket on 3-5 foot bank shots down low. All in all a very enjoyable experience.

[ShockBand]

I'm upper center court at Koch. Was placed in the upper corner at IBA but was surprised that it wasn't all that bad from there. I thought overall it was an A- with my complaints, which have been mentioned several times, would be the scoreboard not having individual stats & when I went to check the stats on my phone I couldn’t access the internet on my phone. Besides that I really enjoyed it. Plus, parking was very easy to get in and out especially considering most stayed to the end. I think IBA is something for Wichita to be proud of & they did a great job tonight considering it was their first basketball game in the arena!

My phone (Sprint) was the same - I had a solid connection for voice and text, but couldn't get a stable enough connection for data to go to a live stats site. I was able to get a meager enough connection at halftime to pull up Shockernet and view the banter at halftime.

IBA is OK for a once a year special event, but I'll take CKA any day.

[pinstripers]

Atmosphere was electric.

Curious as to everyone's reaction if the game had been a stinker.

My seats were f-ing horrible.

If they were not part of my ticket package I would NOT pay money for them.

I hated the ghetto-funk during the warmups.

Agree, could not tell if the ball went thru the hoop or not.

Shuttle was ok, did not mind that at all.

[Rosewood]

There were good and bad from this evening.

When I toured the place 15 months ago (or thereabouts) one of things I noticed early on was the large amount of access points or routers around the concourse. Now, I have no idea if they are working or if they are even still there.

How can you have a building where there is no wireless signal? Can someone get an explanation on this? Some people NEED to be in contact on a consistent basis. It's almost as if it is intentional and I noticed this at the very first Thunder game....no service at all. I don't understand this and it's going to have to be addressed and explained.

My seats were much worse than at the Chuck and I wasn't on the aisle. Thank goodness there wasn't a tall person directly in front of me as they would have been added to either the PUP or IR list at the end of the game from all the head wounds inflicted by my knees.

Memo to random old and or mean people that attend games (or any other ass that sits on the aisle):

It is a bonus to have an aisle seat. Part of the cost is that you have to get up sometimes for people to get by...DEAL WITH IT or DON'T SIT ON THE AISLE!

I sit on the aisle and am all to happy to get up from my seat 1000 times if needed. It is the way it is. The next old woman that questions me or someone in my group with a comment like "that's 3 times you know" is going to get a hip fractured. Shut your hole or stay home.

Concession selection is okay....good but not great. I loved the QT vendor in KC where you could buy a drink for $1. At least you had 1 low price option. Prices are high, but not crazy in most cases. BUT $7 for dippin' dots????? That's the last time my daughter does that....$7????????

Come on folks......

They have to work on the stats thing. It's unacceptable as of now. You could tell Don Hall was struggling with information as well.

Parking was okay. Again, I parked a lot further away than I do at CKA but is was acceptable and easy to get in and out, although in fairness, I get there early and I stay late.

I was told the patdowns were for the premium seating entrances....I don't know anything more than that but come on. I mean I don't want to be blown up but seriously?

There are plenty of things I would change....a few things that MUST be changed, but I still think we should find a way to play 1 game there a year, maybe 2. Probably 1.

Most of those APs are probably for internal tools like the ticket counters, etc. I didn't have a laptop with my cool sniffing tools that would tell me for sure.

How that arena is built it will have the same problems that most arenas have -- they are giant farady cages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage -- they are in effect huge meshes of metal that, especially in the dry winter, build up a lot of static electricity. It was easy to observe this with an AM radio or a cell phone with a signal indicator.

Femtocells are the answer but those have to be provided by the carriers. Sprint has quite a few femtocells in the Sprint Center. Speaking of the Sprint center, that QT shop there is awesome and I would love to have seen something like that at IBA, and CKA, and everywhere really. I love me some QT.

Oh, and pinstripers, I would have probably been a lot more pessimistic about the arena if the game sucked as I would have had more time to focus on the negatives. Since the game was great and had a great flow to it, I never had time once the game was going to dwell on things.

[derbycpa]

I would rate my experience a low C. If we continue to have a game or two a year there as part of my season tickets and they assign season ticket holders to the side of the court I will probably give up my tickets that I have held for 23 years. I don't like being treated as a red headed step child when they have asked for and gotton support over the years.

[DUShock]

Season ticket holder since 1998 same Century Club level only since 2008 I pay 2 donations to accommodate starting a family. In CKA I sit in Section 102 Row 24 IBA Section 110 Row A. I enjoyed the seats and sat by a lady & gentleman that I sat beside at CBE in KC which was nice.

The phone/wireless is a fat goose egg. The parking sucks if I were elderly or for any reason had limited mobility.

There are too few escalators; did I mention the wireless situation is unacceptable? :)

I thought it was okay for a neutral site game.

If they want to have events there okay but please put more Shocker/WSU items. The floor lacked anything Wichita State and the goal padding was the color of Tulsa! The IBA event banners were irritating and the utter lack of stats is more unacceptable than the wireless issue. The scoreboard sucks!

If HCGM likes it we had better get used to it.

All in all I'd give it a D.

I'll take the Chuck. Regardless of venue...

Go Shocks!!!!