RMU men’s basketball announces seating arrangement for the 2018-2019 season

Logan Carney, Sports Manager

Recently the Robert Morris men’s basketball team announced that they will be playing all of their games at the Student Recreation and Fitness Center this season. The team has now announced that they will add seating to the building in anticipation of the crowds for the game.

As first reported by Omari Sankofa of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Robert Morris will add specially fitted bleachers to the gymnasium in order to increase seating from 700 to 1,000. The new bleachers will cost around $90,000.

Speaking to Sankofa, athletic director Craig Coleman said, “We didn’t want to go through two whole years of not being convenient for our fans that are geographically located here, and especially our students, so we felt like this year, let’s just bring it back home.”

Last season, RMU split their home games between PPG Paints Arena and the AJ Palumbo Center at Duquesne. Despite the large increase in potential seating, the team only averaged around 765 fans per game. This led to the move to the Student Recreation and Fitness Center, but how the school would go about seating students was a question. Well, it appears that question has been answered.

The move to the smaller venue is expected to increase attendance and fan experience. The men’s basketball team’s first game in their new home is on Nov. 14 against Mt. Aloysius. Their season starts in Los Angeles against USC on Nov. 6.