Bohls: Texas basketball breaks in Moody, bursts into the big-time

Jack Maddox came dressed for the occasion. Oddly dressed, for sure, but still dressed.

Yeah, the 18-year-old freshman from League City showed up all decked out in Longhorns gear, from the stuffed Bevo mascot taped to the top of his pink baseball cap to his cowboy boots and shorts with a heavy silver chain dangling from his neck, complete with a Longhorns apron.

“I’m probably not your average biochemistry major,” Maddox said. He's a wild-eyed, curly-haired Texas student who goes by the tag "Bevo Hat Guy."

"I first wore this outfit at last year's Texas-OU game. My goal is to be the face of the student section and get them hyped up.”

He did his job very well Monday night on what Longhorns basketball coach Chris Beard rightfully labeled “an historic night” at the team’s luxurious new digs. The Texas men’s basketball team officially christened UT's swanky $380 million Moody Center on Monday night in a gritty 72-57 win over a tough UTEP squad.

While Maddox isn’t average, no longer is the program's home as the Longhorns ushered in the new arena on Robert Dedman Drive just a couple of fast breaks from the Erwin Center, whose life expectancy expired in May.

For that matter, it’s one of a whole lot of win-win-win-win-need-I-go-on situations for the University of Texas, not the least of which is the fact the school got the Oak View Group to build the thing free of cost. True, it only gets the arena for 60 days a year for hoops games, graduations, I Love Bijan Robinson parties, Steve Sarkisian second-half seminars and such, but Texas also realizes 10% of the income from concerts with Reba McEntire to six nights of Harry Styles.

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There were a few empty seats Monday — hey, it’s Austin — but none that are reserved for the students who occupy chairs that encompass 270 degrees of the 360-degree lower bowl from Sections 103-111 just behind both benches and behind both baselines.

They packed in 11,313 fans, even above the 10,763-seat capacity, thanks to overflow students in the SRO section in the rafters. And the students can honestly say this is their arena, their team. Oh, adults are invited, too, but this was and will be a student takeover. They've even created a group of a dozen ambassadors to pass out fliers, talk up basketball around campus and get the student body all jazzed up.

One of them, Round Rock's Mumin Ahmed, was selected for his, well, zest.

"Yeah, I really get into the games," the 21-year-old biology major said. "Sometimes I have to be toned down. I even got close to getting a technical one time. That's why they call me crazy."

Reed Plunket, a grad student, presides over the ambassadors, and Jonathan Stewart is another high-profile leader. "He's mini-famous," Ahmed said. "They call him the 'Hawaiian Shirt Guy.'"

Texas is more than catering to this younger generation. Heck, Thursday's home game against Houston Christian has its own promotion. It's Jorts Night. Maddox will love it.

“We want this to be the best student section in the country,” said marketing and game promotions director Lauren Pinter. “It’s stunning.”

And cozier than the Super Drum. And louder. The capacity can swell to 15,000-plus with raised panels, but honestly Texas will be better off with the smaller number and higher decibel level.

“That ain’t the Erwin Center,” said UTEP’s second-year head coach Joe Golding, who is more than familiar with Texas since his Abilene Christian team shocked Shaka Smart’s Longhorns in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in 2021. “That’s a real college arena. You can’t hear anything. You got to tell Chris to turn the music down a little bit. I’ve got a headache.”

He won’t be the last visitor to feel a little hearing-impaired.

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But Beard wants Moody to be much more than a place to dribble a basketball.

Charles Attal, founder of C3 Presents, which has brought in almost three dozen concerts already since George Strait opened the building in April, was on hand. He had a lot to do with the design of this place and has been coming to Texas basketball games since they were at Gregory Gym.

He raved about the mammoth electrical acoustic panels that also serve as a projection system for all things Longhorn, the only college arena to offer such an innovation. But he really appreciates the wall-to-wall students.

“I know Matthew thinks it’s worth a 4½-to 5-point home advantage,” Attal said of his buddy, Matthew McConaughey, who had his fingerprints on the arena as well and dubbed the student section The Corral. There’s even an Upper Corral where nearly 600 students watched in the SRO section in the rafters. More than 18,000 UT students bought the Big Ticket for $200 to give them access to every sporting event on campus, one sweet deal.

Alas, Mr. Alright, Alright, Alright wasn’t on hand, out of town on this evening. But everything else was all right.

Even the floor with the omnipresent Longhorns silhouette at midcourt, though it wasn’t a new floor as planned and more than a few players slipped during Monday’s game. Because the Canadian maple floor produced by a company out of Michigan had something like 20 dead spots and was deemed unacceptable, Texas sent it back and then had to improvise and move over a six-year-old floor from the Erwin Center, one school official said. A 5% failure rate on such defects is workable, but maybe a piece of the Erwin Center isn’t all bad, considering the sentimental value.

But here’s the real good news. For once, a dead spot doesn’t refer to the Longhorns’ home court overall. That’s because Moody was jumping.

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Beard accurately labeled the advent of the glitzy arena “a game-changer for Texas basketball.” And he’s right.

The Moody offers an on-campus arena — even if a good hike from Jester Center dorm — a state-of-the-art facility with real-life Austin art murals and the usual parking problems. And Beard promises the background light behind the glass backboards from the Moet & Chandon Imperial Lounge champagne room will not blind free-throw shooters.

But make no mistake. The Longhorns are hanging with the big boys with the place they'll call home. Texas won’t take a backseat to anyone.

“It’s easy to see the glaring positive,” Beard said. “I haven’t heard of any dislikes. There are the usual challenges with parking, but there are definitely not any negatives.”

No. 12 Texas officially broke in the building and the third-ranked UT women will follow suit Friday night against Louisiana.

This has long been a school that has as much tolerated the interlude between football and spring football and occasionally celebrated those who dribble the ball when Abe Lemons and Tom Penders turned games in the Erwin Center into an event, a real happening. And those two delivered in oratory and victory.

Beard and Vic Schaefer are here to take Texas basketball to the next level, and their new Moody Center is just the vehicle to transport the Longhorns.

“That’s a really, really good team,” Golding said of Texas. “It’s got a chance to play in late March.”

Clearly, Schaefer’s bunch is ahead of Beard’s, having punched tickets to back-to-back Elite Eight appearances with talent that is only growing by the minute. But Beard checked a box when his crew topped Virginia Tech to get past the first round of the NCAA Tournament to end an eight-year tournament losing streak and might have toppled Purdue and reached the Sweet 16 if the Boilermakers hadn’t been awarded something like 3,000 free throws.

“It was ridiculous,” Texas transfer Jabari Rice said after Monday night's game. “It was like an NCAA Tournament game. I love being around people who love basketball. They were crazy.”

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We may not immediately see a Beardsville arise in Moody’s shadow on the order of a Krzyzewski-ville outside Cameron Indoor, but then again we might. More than 1,800 crowded into Moody on Monday, lured by up-close seats and free orange T-shirts with McConaughey’s mug plastered on them as well as 150 boxes of free Southside Pies pizza. You know any student who turns down free pepperoni? Didn’t think so.

This facility is, to put it mildly, student-friendly. They even pick a Student of the Game to show on the video screen.

Beard calls them “student-friendly seats,” and he’s all too aware that they’ll be student-unfriendly toward opponents. He did the same in Lubbock and reaped the benefits because the Erwin Center has been on too many occasions too friendly to visitors like Texas Tech and Kansas. The men averaged 12,398 in the Erwin barn last year, well below its 16,000-plus capacity, and ranked 25th nationally. Those numbers won’t climb, thanks to Moody's more intimate, rowdier setting, but it’s a great tradeoff.

“I don’t think there’s a better basketball crowd in the country than in Austin tonight,” Beard summed up. “They impacted the game, and they were having fun. Now the next step is to be consistent. We’re blessed to have one of the best basketball facilities in the world.”

Now they just have to keep filling it up. The bucket and the building.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas basketball team ushers in new arena and, possibly, a new era