The reconfiguration of the seating in Moody Coliseum brings more seats closer to the floor, which should make the arena even louder as crowds grow (photo by PonyFans.com).

“Oh, my gosh,” SMU center Cannen Cunningham said when asked for his initial impression when he and his teammates took the floor last week for their first practice session in the newly renovated Moody Coliseum. “When I first got here, I didn’t expect anything like this would ever happen — ever.”

Head coach Larry Brown has a different perspective than the players. He was well aware of the progress being made on the renovation of the school’s basketball and volleyball facility, so he was less surprised than his players were by the final product when they took the floor for first time. Instead, he said it was an event held before the first practice that solidified his opinion about the building.

“I got to see it … (about) seven weeks ago, and I came for the opening with David and Carolyn Miller — they had a dinner,” Brown said. “I had seen it before, and it’s beautiful, but when I saw how moved they were, that somehow made it even better.”

As much as Brown enjoyed seeing the Millers’ pleasure with the way the arena turned out, his enthusiasm was tempered by his concern that all of the additions and updates might diminish the familiar feel of the facility.

“I liked the old Moody, and I was nervous that the new one, as nice as it is, might lose some of its charm and intimacy,” Brown said. “But it hasn’t. It still has that charm, that character, but now it’s a start-of-the-art, modern facility.”

Guard Nick Russell, like Cunningham one of just five players on the 2013-14 SMU roster who have played for the Mustangs in Moody, said he had no preconceived notions about what the facility would be like when he and his teammates held their first practice in Moody last Thursday.

“I had no idea what it would look like, besides the pictures we saw when it was being built,” Russell said. “We had an idea, but we didn’t really know. Whatever we thought … this place is beyond all of our expectations. Everything’s different: the lights, the floor, the (ceiling), the tunnel to the locker room — everything. They put in a lot of time, making sure they get all the little things.”

Cunningham said the first thing he noticed in the new-look arena was what he called “the Laker lights;” the lights will illuminate the court while leaving the crowd in near darkness, a style Cunningham said was started by the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers.

“When the seats are totally dark, it has a different look,” Cunningham said. “It’s nice.”

Cunningham also noted that the new technology in the arena will allow effects that simply weren’t possible before the renovation.

“In ‘Old Moody,’ I don’t think they could have turned the lights off for introductions or anything,” he said, laughing. “It would have taken 30 or 35 minutes to get them back on.”

Guard Nick Russell compared the new Moody Coliseum floor to those found in NBA arenas, saying the surface has more spring in it, allowing players to recover more quickly from sore ankles and knees (photo by PonyFans.com).

Russell agreed with Cunningham’s assessment that the most noticeable change is in the illumination of the building.

“The biggest difference is the lights — it’s like they’re fluorescent,” Russell said. “The brightness, the way they hit the floor, the way they hit the glass (backboard) … it’s totally different.”

One feature Cunningham and Russell agreed is drastically improved is in the floor itself. Before the renovation, Moody had a temporary floor placed on top of the built-in version, which made for a less than forgiving surface, Cunningham said.

“That was a nice floor, but it was hard — you didn’t want to fall on it,” Cunningham said. “But this floor is ‘spring-ier.’ I’ve got bad knees, so that makes a big deal for someone like me. You feel it in practice and games, but more than that, you feel the difference the next day, when you’re recovering. We have only had a few practices in here, and you can already tell that. It’s going to be a great advantage for us.”

The renovated Moody will have fewer seats — capacity is about 7,000, which is roughly 2,000 fewer seats than there were in the arena’s former incarnation. The building should be louder — the excitement around the SMU teams and the long-awaited reopening of the arena point to larger crowds, but the configuration of the seats also should allow fans to generate more noise. The previous version had bleachers directly behind the benches and close to the floor, but now, the second layer of seats is closer to the floor, as well. Brown said he doesn’t worry about the fans hindering his communication with his team, either in timeout huddles or when the players are on the floor, starting with Saturday’s “re-opener” against the Connecticut Huskies.

“I expect Connecticut will have a lot of fans here, because that’s one of the great programs in the nation,” Brown said. “I coached (UConn head coach) Kevin (Ollie, who was born in Dallas and played for Brown with the Philadelphia 76ers in 2000-01), and now he’s a great coach. I have nothing against playing the games we played (at the Curtis Culwell Center) in Garland, because we were fortunate to have a great facility to play in while this place was getting finished. But I’m not going to miss the bus rides up there, and I’m not going to miss looking up in the crowd and not seeing many people.

“We’re lucky to be opening this place against a great team like Connecticut, and I’m excited for the kids to come here and play in front of a lot of people. But we’re hopeful that we can continue to build the program to the level that a lot of people want to come see us play, no matter who we’re playing.”

Russell agreed that the reconfiguration of the seats allows for an even more intimate atmosphere than before. Now, he said, the arena has been built, and it’s up to the Mustangs to make sure the people come.

“With the bleachers the way they are, it feels more compact than before, which should make it louder,” Russell said. “Now we just need the people.”

Brown said the university and its donors have done their part to provide the SMU basketball and volleyball teams with a state-of-the-art facility. Now, he said, the Mustangs need to do what is necessary to make Moody a court with a decided home-court advantage for SMU.

“I might be different than other coaches,” Brown said. “When I was coaching in the pros, I would take the young kids over to a new arena so they could look around. When I had a team that was getting ready to play the Celtics, I’d take the young guys over and show them the banners with the names of guys like (Bill) Russell and (Bob) Cousy. I wanted them to know the history of the game, and know the history of the arena we were playing in. I don’t see the need to do that as much now as I once did. I’m more interested in our game, our rebounding, our defense.

“If we play well, we’re going to like any gym we play in.”

(Editor's note: Please forgive the lack of Hollywood effects here — this is just raw footage to show several vantage points in the new-look Moody Coliseum.)