Indiana basketball: Assembly Hall named top home-court environment in college hoops

In a survey conducted by Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander from CBSSports, roughly 100 coaches named Indiana basketball‘s home, Assembly Hall, one of the best environments in all of college basketball.

The nearly 100 coaches that were polled for this survey ranged from head coaches at elite programs to assistant coaches at small Division I programs. This summer survey was conducted with complete anonymity and coaches gave some raw feedback about the best environments to play in all of college hoops.

Matt Norlander split the survey into tiers as the most common schools included on the ballots by these college coaches and also included what these coaches had to say about these home-court environments.

Where does Indiana basketball and Assembly Hall land in the top 10 list?

TIER 1

TIER 2

TIER 3

As you can see, Big Ten schools headline three of the top 10 home-court environments, while the Big 12 and SEC only had two of the top 10 home-court environments each. There were many schools that were on the cusp of making the top 10, including: Grand Canyon, Arkansas, Butler, VCU, Tennessee, Dayton, BYU, Illinois, Iowa State, Providence, and San Diego State.

While I’m personally offended and appalled that Mackey Arena somehow, some way, is ahead of Assembly Hall in this survey, Cameron Indoor and Allen Fieldhouse, is not that surprising. The one quote included about Assembly Hall, which gets me excited for the 2022-23 season, was this:

"“When Indiana is at its BEST, the over 17,000-plus on top of you (that you) can’t beat. I’ve been in there when the building has actually started shaking.”"

The definition of a top home-court environment, from experience Assembly Hall at its loudest myself, is where yourself, and I’m assuming the coaching staff and players, cannot even hear themselves think. Thinking back on my time at Assembly Hall, when Indiana basketball matched up with Duke and Grayson Allen in November 2017, while Hoosier Nation was chanting some absurd things at one of the most hated college guards of all-time, I remember the moments of just pure frenzy and excitement in the air. At that moment, that’s when I learned that Assembly Hall is one of the greatest home-court venues of all time.

I will take Assembly Hall over every other college basketball arena any day of the week. Take me to Bloomington and leave me locked in Assembly Hall for the rest of my life, and I’ll be all set.