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Indiana women’s basketball coach Teri Moren called the court conditions for her team’s holiday weekend tournament at the Las Vegas Invitational “disappointing” after clips of the court setup—which took place in the ballroom of The Mirage hotel and had no stands for spectators—made rounds on social media.
In lieu of stands, chairs were set up around the court, with very few fans able to be in attendance.
“What was disappointing was the aesthetics; it’s not a fan-friendly environment,” Moren said, per ESPN’s M.A. Voepel. “As women’s basketball coaches, we’re trying to move our game forward. It felt like because [this] got so many ticks on social, that we had taken a couple steps backward. We have an obligation to grow our game, and we completely missed on this opportunity because you have a lot of really good teams that are here. I see all these other tournaments going on and footage of that, but this was a major miss.”
This is not the first, nor the most high-profile, instance of women’s college basketball teams playing in inadequate conditions, as a similar incident became a major talking point during the 2021 NCAA tournament.
Site coordinator Ryan Polk offered an apology for the subpar setup.
“We’re very sorry,” Polk said. “The court and the lighting, that stuff hasn’t been an issue. But we needed to have full-on bleachers. We have notified The Mirage we won’t be coming back again. This is a one-time disaster in terms of events. It definitely did not go the way we thought or planned. We just severely missed the mark when comes to the spectator side.”
Moren insisted that the conditions the team found at The Mirage did not match the expectations prior to the event.
“I think there are other people who probably need to apologize as well for wanting us to come and play in this event and making promises, if you will,” Moren said. “This is not what was described to us as far as what the venue was going to look like, what the setup was going to look like.
