WVU Coliseum
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| Location | Monongahela Boulevard Morgantown, WV 26505 |
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| Coordinates | 39°38′57″N 79°58′52″W / 39.64917°N 79.98111°WCoordinates: 39°38′57″N 79°58′52″W / 39.64917°N 79.98111°W |
| Owner | West Virginia University |
| Operator | West Virginia University |
| Capacity | 14,000 |
| Surface | Hardwood |
| Construction | |
| Broke ground | December 21, 1968 |
| Opened | December 1, 1970 |
| Construction cost | $10.4 million ($64.1 million in 2017 dollars) |
| Architect | Silling Associates, Inc. |
| General contractor | McDevitt & Street Co. |
| Tenants | |
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West Virginia Mountaineers (NCAA) Men's basketball (1970–present) Women's basketball (1973–present) Women's volleyball (1973–present) Women's gymnastics (1973–present) Wrestling (1970–present) |
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The WVU Coliseum is a 14,000-seat multi-purpose arena located on the Evansdale campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. The circular arena features a poured concrete roof. It was built with state funds and replaced the WVU Fieldhouse, which seated 6,000.
The Coliseum, which opened in 1970, has more than 10.5 million cubic feet (300,000 m3) of space. It is home to West Virginia University Mountaineers sports teams, including the men's and women's basketball teams, men's wrestling, and women's volleyball and gymnastics. There is also a 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) weight room located in the lower level of the Coliseum. The arena has nearly 100 offices, 13 lecture and seminar rooms, a dance studio, safety lab, racquetball and squash courts, and the Jerry West Mountaineer Room, which holds nearly 150 people for meetings. The arena also has more than 1,000 individual locker units in various dressing rooms available for students and staff.
The Coliseum has been used for music concerts but the concrete roof has poor sound distribution properties, so other venues in town are more appropriate for this purpose. The poor sound quality was purposeful, as it was the intention of the designers to cup the ceiling so that crowd noise generated at basketball games would be directed back to the floor. The seating at the venue was also designed for optimized viewing during sporting events, making the setup for concerts to be not as optimal as other large arenas.
The first event held at the Coliseum was a Grand Funk Railroad concert in 1970. The Coliseum was one of the sites for games of the 1974 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. Other National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men's Division I college basketball events it has hosted include the ECAC South Region Tournament organized by the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) in 1975 and 1976 and the Atlantic 10 Conference men's basketball tournament in 1984 and 1988.
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