Southern making the best of switch from Baton Rouge to McKale Center

By the originally scheduled tip time of 2 p.m. Sunday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Mini-Dome figured to be packed.

Overflowing, maybe. Southern’s 7,500-seat arena, formally known as the F.G. Clark Activity Center, was supposed to be hosting a nationally-ranked Arizona team coming off a huge game at Duke just two days earlier.

“No question it would have been a sellout,” Southern coach Kevin Johnson said. “Probably would have been the biggest crowd in the Mini-Dome in a long time.”

That was one aim of the Pac-12/SWAC Legacy Series, after all.

Starting last season, teams from each conference were paired off for two-year home-and-home deals that would ensure the HBCU schools had a rare chance to host high-major Pac-12 teams. Both conferences also jointly announced that the series could create a forum for the “promotion and education around issues of anti-racism and social justice.”

The UA-Southern matchup in Baton Rouge might have been the single-most anticipated Pac-12/SWAC game of them all, too. Especially considering that No. 12 Arizona would have been coming off its monster 78-73 win at No. 2 Duke on Friday, flying straight from North Carolina to Louisiana for what could have easily been a trap game if the Wildcats didn’t quickly shake off the high from their emotional win.

Instead, when the originally scheduled tipoff time approached Sunday, Johnson was on the phone with the Star, talking about what might have been... while he and his team sat in Tucson, awaiting what has become a Monday game at McKale Center instead.

“I’m not really sure about all the details,” Johnson said. “There were some things that transpired.”

While a request for comment from Southern AD Roman Banks was unsuccessful when the game was moved from Baton Rouge to Tucson two months ago, Johnson expressed no bitterness, saying that maybe the Duke game was some sort of spark that led to the change.

“I know the administrators do their best to protect the interests of their program,” Johnson said, “So I’m gonna do my best as a coach.”

What actually happened, according to Arizona staffers, wasn’t really about the Duke game. The problem was that Arizona, partially at the request of Fox, wanted to complete its nonconference schedule with a game against Florida Atlantic in Las Vegas just before Christmas — a move that would necessitate another home game at McKale Center.

Fox “wanted Dec. 23, they had a national timeslot and they wanted a prominent college basketball game,” Lloyd said. “They worked hard behind the scenes to try to make it work for us. TV is obviously a big driver of everything we do in college sports. There’s no looking around that.”

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Besides, Lloyd and FAU coach Dusty May had a good relationship, and the Owls were hot after reaching the Final Four last season. But FAU wasn’t interested in playing at McKale Center or even settling on a home-and-home deal that would put UA back in Boca Raton, Fla., to return the game in a future season.

Arizona really didn’t want to play FAU at McKale on Dec. 23 anyway because UA students would be out of town, worsening the home-court advantage.

So the game was set for Las Vegas, but that meant the Wildcats would fall one game short of its 18-appearance minimum at McKale, a school-imposed rule for season-ticket marketing and internal budget-planning purposes.

With no other viable alternatives, Arizona had to go back to Southern and ask the game be moved. UA offered Southern an undisclosed amount of cash that likely exceeds $100,000 — the Star’s public records request in September for game contracts still has not been fulfilled — and a promise to play a future game at Southern’s Baton Rouge campus.

“Not sure what year,” Johnson said. “But I did hear that.”

In the meanwhile, the switch left Johnson with a particularly brutal way to begin his Southern coaching career. Hired in the offseason to replace the fired Sean Woods, whose Jaguar team lost 95-78 to UA at McKale last season, Johnson wound up holding a first-year schedule that suddenly opened with road games at TCU, UNLV and Arizona — all while having to replace Southern’s top five scorers.

Not fun.

But, chuckling over that predicament, Johnson said he’s actually been pretty happy with the results so far. He said he brought in 11 newcomers, spent the offseason working with most of them, and then carved together a team that lost 108-75 at TCU in its Nov. 6 opener but upset UNLV 85-71 two days later.

The Jaguars had more chances to bond over the weekend, too. Instead of flying back to Louisiana for a couple of days after the UNLV win, the Jaguars bused to Phoenix, where they hung out, practiced and met with some Arizona-based Southern alumni, though Johnson said their efforts to secure Suns-Lakers tickets for Friday fell through.

Then they relocated to Tucson in time to practice at UA’s Richard Jefferson Gym on Sunday, a final preparation for a far different environment than they might have otherwise expected.

“It’s been a journey,” Johnson said. “I love the way the guys are working, and I love the way they’re trying to come together.”