https://www.oudaily.com/sports/ou-h...cle_946a1cca-8f36-11ee-8426-7b5610c685d6.html
OU honoring longtime home McCasland Field House in students-only game against Arkansas Pine Bluff
Nov 30, 2023
Daniel Hoang/The Daily
Alvan Adams skipped his usual pregame nap on December 7, 1974, and almost five decades later, he can still remember why.
That day, instead of sleeping, Adams watched as the press box on the west side of the football stadium was purposely imploded. Then, a few hours later, the basketball standout led Oklahoma to a win over No. 5 South Carolina.
Those two historic moments were not only witnessed by Adams, but also by the McCasland Field House.
The relic of basketball history, which lies on the edge of campus, has seen the transformation of basketball and of the university. The field house has watched the fall of rivals, the development of athletes and the beauty of competition.
For 95 years, it has held the remnants of the people, the plays and the moments that made Oklahoma athletics, and specifically men’s basketball, special.
And to former OU players like Adams, that is the magic of McCasland.
“It was a funky building,” Adams said. “But it was a historically funky building.”
The “old field house” watched as competitors like Adams, an All-American and member of the 1970s Big Eight decade team, braced the McCasland hardwood.
For 48 seasons, fans surrounded teams on three sides at McCasland, and at 7 p.m. Thursday night during the Sooners’ (6-0) game against Arkansas Pine Bluff (4-4) on ESPN+, they will do the same in a students-only game.
Though the game expanded and changed from 1928 to 1975, the intimate venue stayed the same, and, in both basketball and in life, consistency is important.
After five decades of stability, McCasland became an integral part of Oklahoma basketball and the fanbase’s lives.
“It was home, it was our home court, and whatever it was, that was our favorite place,” Adams said. “The locker room was tiny, our training room was tiny, the coach’s office was tiny, but it was home.”
Thousands of spectators visited the field house. However, they did not translate to the Lloyd Noble Center. A distant, much less intimate venue has posed attendance struggles since its opening in 1975, and now head coach Porter Moser is doing what he can to promote fan engagement and student involvement.
An idea that was sparked two years ago by vertical ceilings and posters of Alvan Adams and Gar Heard on the arena’s walls, has now come to fruition for Moser, and the Sooners’ throwback game in McCasland could potentially help students envision an electric basketball environment.
“I thought it would be really cool for the students to be right on top of the floor, on the sidelines, you know, everywhere,” Moser said. “Then hopefully they will be excited, and we can visualize what Lloyd Noble would look like packed.”
The students-only game serves as an opportunity to not only create a unique venue but also as a way to honor the building that housed the program and the players, coaches and fans that supported it.
“It’s fun to have an occasional link to the past,” Adams said. “McCasland was home, and that old building was an advantage, but no matter what, whether it is a link to (Brian) Bosworth on the football field or Blake Griffin in the stands, or all the alumni that can make it back, I mean people always love to remember.”
‘To drive by the old field house’
A promise had been made to Oklahoma’s 1976 recruiting class. By committing to OU, they would be the first people to play in the Lloyd Noble Center.
That promise was kept.
However, the transition to the multi-purpose arena in 1975 meant leaving behind the gym that had turned many of their childhood dreams into a reality and housed OU’s basketball program for years.
Despite finishing their collegiate careers at the new venue, for players like former OU forward Jerry Vest, it is McCasland they search for when they visit their alma mater.
“I have been back to Norman a number of times and sometimes the old field house is accessible, sometimes it’s open and you can walk in and sometimes it’s just driving by,” Vest said. “I never miss a chance of going back to Norman to see the old field house and to think about all of those special times.”
As the players looked outside of their windows at the Washington House dorms in the 1970s, it was McCasland Field House that looked back, and for teammates like Vest and Adams, the field house was the center of their lives.
A short walk from student housing, their classes and football games, it served as the middle ground for everything they did, and the familiarity within the four walls of McCasland served as an advantage.
“The same court that we played on, we practiced on,” Adams said. “We practiced on that court, we ran sprints, we put in new plays, the coach praised us and the coach got onto us. Then when we had games, we were in the same space, the same volume, we knew it.”
Adams knew it, as he broke records in the field house before getting drafted as the fourth overall pick to the Phoenix Suns in the months before his senior season.
It was players like Adams and Vest who embraced the intimacy of McCasland, and as they moved to the NBA or the Lloyd Noble Center, it was ambivalence that followed.
“It was mixed emotions for everyone that moved,” Vest said. “There was a great deal of excitement, but there was also a nostalgic feeling for the old fieldhouse because we all had some good experiences there and a lot of memories that we forged over those three years.”
‘Every little crack in the wood’
Former Oklahoma forward Rick McNeil can remember the voices of 5,000 fans when he reminisces about his time playing at McCasland.
Echos of the crowd’s cheers bounced off the rafters and filled the gym.
“I played in the old field house for a couple of years and loved the environment,” McNeil said. “Obviously it was smaller, and you didn’t have to have all the people to have all the loud noise.”
For decades, the stands of McCasland hosted thousands of people in hundreds of packed arenas and brought life to many OU basketball teams.
While hoping to generate support for a Sooners team that has started their season 6-0 for the first time in eight years, Moser also sees this as a way to honor the stories that have supported and grown his program.
“You think about all the players that came before you,” Moser said. “I just think about all the players that have been in (McCasland), that have come through … To know those guys wore the OU jersey, I believe they paved the way.”
Teammates like Adams, Vest and McNeil are integral pieces of what made OU basketball and McCasland Field House memorable, but the opportunity for students to relish in that history is what makes their contributions worthwhile.
“I think anytime you have the opportunity for current players and current students to draw on those past experiences, and the history that went into the formation of who the University of Oklahoma basketball team and student body is today are positive,” Vest said. “Even though it is only one game, to experience what that old tradition is like is very positive.”
Forty-nine years have gone by since consecutive games were played in the field house. However, despite the large gap in time, for the people who played there, it was the small details that made the arena special.
Though a possibility of a new arena in the University North Park Entertainment District has been proposed, McCasland will continue to stand, just as it has always done, and encompass the history and tradition of OU basketball.
“It’s just going back in history,” McNeil said. “When you go back in there and have a game it just brings back old memories. You remember every little crack in the wood. You remember everything about it.”
