UNLV visiting a true shrine to hoops

LAWRENCE, Kan.

Pay heed, all who enter: Beware of The Phog.

This is the hand-painted sign that hangs on a wall behind the five national championship banners, which hang from rafters that include ones documenting an NCAA record 57 regular-season conference titles, which lead your eyes around the historic barn to the south wall, where jerseys are hung to honor former greats.

One is for No. 13.

Wilt Chamberlain.

Welcome to the birthplace of basketball, to the game’s most sacred slab of hardwood, to a 16,300-seat venue that is louder on game days than your average heavy metal concert.

“I really believe this from the bottom of my soul,” former Kansas coach Roy Williams told reporters in October. “It’s the greatest home-court advantage in college basketball and maybe in any sport, whatsoever.”

UNLV will experience firsthand today what it’s like to play the No. 13 Jayhawks in storied Allen Fieldhouse, ending nonconference play with a 1:30 p.m. PST tipoff on CBS.

It’s a fairly daunting challenge, given Kansas under coach Bill Self is 175-9 at home.

Nine losses in 12 years.

“It’s a really cool place, obviously,” UNLV senior point guard Cody Doolin said after the team’s practice Saturday. “It was cool walking in and seeing the banners and the retired jerseys and all the history. It’s the No. 1 destination for all college basketball players, just wanting to play a game here. It is something we will tell our kids about one day. But we’re focused. We’re here to win a basketball game. We’re going to have to play our best game to beat them.

“Win or lose, this is going to be a great experience for our team coming into a place like this. It doesn’t get any tougher than this, so it will prepare us for the rest of our season.”

The Jayhawk is everywhere, and so respected that Kansas players are not allowed to step on its image in their locker room. The mascot has been invited to weddings of fans and even some funerals, which is just north of creepy when you think about a student dressed in a bird costume bowing his head in prayer while standing next to a grieving family.

I’m assuming all such eulogies conclude, “Amen, and Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk, K-U.”

The fieldhouse is named for Forrest “Phog” Allen, the father of basketball, who helped create the NCAA Tournament and came to Kansas in 1904 to play for James Naismith.

The guy who invented basketball.

Who, by the way, is the only one of eight coaches in Kansas history to produce a sub-.500 record.

It must have been tough getting shots to fall in those peach baskets.

Allen Fieldhouse celebrated its 60th birthday in October, six decades after it cost $2.7 million to build (which would translate to $22 million today) and a red scoreboard was erected in which the eye of the Jayhawk blinked every time Kansas scored. Construction is underway on a 32,000-square-foot facility that will be connected to the fieldhouse and permanently house Naismith’s original 13 Rules of Basketball.

At its start, the fieldhouse had metal hooks for a locker room, and a dirt running track surrounded the basketball court. Adolph Rupp played for Allen at Kansas. So did Dean Smith.

“It is everything they say it is,” said UNLV coach Dave Rice, who was an assistant with the Rebels when they lost here as part of the preseason National Invitation Tournament in 1997. “For someone like me, a basketball traditionalist and historian, to walk into Allen Fieldhouse and think this is where the game started, from James Naismith to Phog Allen and all the things linked to Kansas basketball, all the great players who were here and who played against Kansas here, it’s a great experience.

“It’s one of the reasons we want to play this type of game. We have to pay our respects to the game we play. It doesn’t hold the significance of taking our team to somewhere like the 9-11 Memorial, which we did in New York this season, but from an athletic standpoint, this is a great place. It’s also the loudest place I’ve been. It gets going in here, a great environment for college basketball. We know the challenge.”

It gets going because Kansas has sold out 217 straight games, because the way for students to get tickets is through a lottery system that requires someone from every camping group to remain in Allen Fieldhouse from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day before the next home game. Roll is called throughout the day, and if your representative left, your group loses its place in line. There are official camping rules and everything.

It gets going because this place is absolutely crazy for anything Jayhawk.

Think about it: The bird has been invited to funerals.

The greatest home-court advantage in college basketball?

Amen.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.