McKale Center madness: Arizona Wildcats — men and women — host rare home series

It’s not often fans of both Arizona basketball programs can attend games at McKale Center on back-to-back-to-back-to-back days.

It’s an occurrence that almost never happens. UA women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes couldn’t recall it ever happening during her playing days for the Wildcats.

“That was like 20-something years ago,” Barnes said. “I barely remember yesterday.”

Both the Arizona men’s and women’s basketball programs are hosting Utah and Colorado this week. Just a few weeks ago, the women’s team faced the Washington schools, while the men’s team swept USC and UCLA at McKale Center. Usually, when the men are at home, the women are on the road. And vice versa.

“I think it’s interesting that it’s the same four teams, and I don’t ever recall that ever happening,” said Suzy Mason, Arizona’s senior associate director of athletics, event management/facilities. “I think those two schools wanted to escape the snow.”

The Arizona men’s and women’s basketball teams lead the Pac-12 in attendance; the women draw an average of 7,048 spectators, while the men bring 13,992 per contest. Per the average McKale Center crowds this season, over 42,000 people are expected at Arizona’s arena in this four-day stretch.

Sounds like a daunting challenge to organize four home basketball games at McKale Center, especially when both teams are ranked and lead the conference in attendance, right?

“It’s one setup, so it’s a lot easier in transition compared to, let’s say, basketball to gymnastics, or gymnastics to basketball when it’s a day game the following day,” Mason said. “That’s more difficult, because you have to push back the bleachers and clean up after a large crowd, making sure you have the right staff and resources. But for us, we’ve set up the arena (on Wednesday) and it will stay in basketball ‘game mode’ until Monday. From that standpoint, it simplifies things.”

The most imperative tasks? The two S’s and two “propers”: staffing, supplies, proper rest and proper coordination. Mason has two additional days on the docket to staff A-Team security guards, police officers, plumbers, custodians, in-game operations workers and interns, who can only work 25 hours in a week since they’re students.

“A lot of the impact is just cleaning up the arena and making sure there are enough orders of Aramark concessions, souvenirs and enough parking for staff members and everyone else,” Mason said.

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“We also want to make sure that A) no one gets burnt out and B) we have a pretty good plan to knock out Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. With the attendance that we’ve had, we try to be as efficient as possible. We can make small changes on the fly, but we also need to make sure our security, our police — they have other events they work around town, so we need to make sure everyone knows there are four games.”

Unfortunately for the UA, the Arizona men’s basketball game against Colorado on Saturday at 6 p.m. will be televised on ESPN2 rather than Pac-12 Networks, which had UA-Utah on Thursday and will air both women’s games this week. So the Pac-12 Networks broadcast truck will have to park overnight somewhere in Tucson while the ESPN truck can operate Saturday.

On the plus side for the crew workers at McKale Center this week: At least they’re not in Tempe, where the Arizona State wrestling program is hosting Cal State Bakersfield at noon, then the men’s basketball team plays Utah at 4 p.m.

“Those kinds of transitions make it very difficult for a facilities team,” Mason said.

In the future, Mason said having four straight basketball games at McKale Center is “doable for us.”

“I like it better (to have separate home weekends) for our crossover fans who go to both games. … Maybe they like a little bit of a break,” Mason said. “But I know we have a loyal following and they’re never going to miss a game.

“They can schedule their weekends around Arizona sporting events. As much as it is sports, it’s their entertainment money at work. It gives our fans something to look forward to all week long and just be saturated with sports.”

Regardless of how challenging it might be for Mason and her staff, they abide by a familiar motto: The show must go on.

“In the back of the house, we’re struggling,” she said. “But in front of the house, hopefully they see four really great basketball games.”