UCSB Gauchos Men’s Basketball

My sister plays college basketball and I try to go to as many of her games as possible. I always dread comming to her games at the thunder done because it’s always a frustrating experience. They always try to push all of the visitors into a tiny little corner where we can’t even see the basket game good.
The gym will be over half empty with plenty of seats. But if you sit in the wrong seat they will make you move even though they have rows of empty seats.
This is the only college gym I’ve been to we’re they try to designate seats. Terrible

It is fun to see Basketball at the Thunderdome… is BACK… It is the place to be on game nights. I hope we continue to fill these seats for BOTH MEN’S and WOMEN’S games!
What a great season we had… can’t wait for next season!

I’m a college basketball junkie, and of all the places that I’ve traveled to during my time down here in SoCal, my favorite place to see a game so far is at UCSB’s Thunderdome. It’s as unique a facility that I’ve ever been to, both good and bad, but the good far outweigh the bad. Beautiful sightlines, warm all wood interior, semi-​general admission seating, convenient parking and close proximity to good places to eat in Isla Vista. The only bad things I can say about it are that the seats are uncomfortable and it might be a little too big, a good sized crowd still leaves a lot of empty seats.
And there hasn’t been a better year in quite some time to get on down there for a Gauchos game. They currently stand at 12 – 3 and, despite losing to Cal State Northridge Saturday, they are still the odds-​on favorite to go to the NCAA Tournament for the Big West. Senior guard Alex Harris is the man scoring 22 points per game to lead the conference in scoring, junior forward Chris Devine is a solid player although he is prone to frustrating lapses in focus, and sophomore guard James Powell has stepped up to give them a third option. They aren’t a deep team though, and that might be their downfall. No matter, they’re an interesting and exciting team and they deserve the attention of the students and the community.
One quick suggestion to the game management crew working their games — please, please, please, do musical chairs at halftime more often. That is one of the best halftime games that I have ever seen. Basically, they get a bunch of kids to play musical chairs with one little twist. They give each kid a basketball, then they play the music and the kids go round and round at center court. When the music stops, the kids then have to sprint to one end of the court and make a basket before they can come back and take a seat. It turns into utter chaos and the crowd really gets into it. Usually the crowd picks the girl or the smaller kid to root on and if they end up knocking off the older boy, it’s pandemonium.
Here’s the Gauchos remaining home schedule…
Thursday, January 24 vs. Pacific — 7:00 PM
Saturday, January 26 vs. UC Davis — 7:00 PM
Thursday, February 7 — vs. Cal State Fullerton — 7:00 PM
Saturday, February 9 vs. UC Irvine — 7:00 PM
Thursday, February 14 vs. Cal Poly — 7:00 PM
Saturday, March 1 vs. UC Riverside — 7:00 PM
P.S…I’ve used the address for Freebirds since it’s just about the closest business. I don’t know why, but the UCSB campus is a Unilocal dead zone. You can’t get Unilocal to recognize addresses on it at all.