LAFAYETTE — The last time Louisiana women's basketball played at Earl K. Long Gymnasium the Cajuns beat Weber State 87-85 in 2OT to win their second consecutive WBI Championship. Thursday the team returns to a facility nobody on this current team has every played a game at.
The Cajuns haven't regularly played at Earl K. Long since 2012. The team returns Thursday night after a Jason Aldean concert prompted the move.
Louisiana occasionally practices at the gym, still Gary Brodhead admitted Monday he's worried about how the team will shoot. During practice this week he pumped in crowd noise to simulate how loud he anticipates the atmosphere.
Monday, Brodhead reminisced to his first game as the program's head coach in 2012 when the team drew a capacity crowd.
"My first game that I coached here at UL, we played in Earl K. and broke the attendance record. The Fire Marshal shut us down at 1,200. It's only supposed to hold 1,100. So hopefully we'll get a good crowd and come out with a win," he said.
Official attendance that night was 1,007. The Cajuns beat LSU-Shreveport 83-42.
Thursday's game caries plenty of significance for the Cajuns who continue to fight for playoff seeding. Louisiana currently sits fourth in the Sun Belt standings and cannot move up, but could fall as far as seventh. With the new Sun Belt Women's Basketball Tournament format, the third and fourth seeded teams host four-team pods similar to the NCAA Tournament's format. Those games would be played next Tuesday and Wednesday March 10th and 11th.