Cadence Bank Arena ready for Mississippi State basketball's return after a decade
Dec. 16—When Mississippi State's men's basketball team tips off against North Texas at Cadence Bank Arena Sunday afternoon, it will be almost exactly a decade since the last time the Bulldogs played in Tupelo.
It'll be a busy weekend, as the arena is also hosting the Harlem Globetrotters on Saturday. But hosting one of the two SEC schools in the state is a major opportunity for the arena and the city of Tupelo.
"It has been a while, but for a facility like us in Tupelo being this close, it's a huge deal for us and the city of Tupelo, for our region to have an SEC team play here," said Kevan Kirkpatrick, Cadence Bank Arena's executive director. "It says a lot about our market, that it's going to be supported. It's just a really big deal that they're coming to Tupelo."
Tupelo has been kind to Mississippi State in the past. The Bulldogs are undefeated in their four previous games at the arena. The last one came on Dec. 13, 2013, when Mississippi State defeated Southeastern Louisiana 68-62. Rick Ray was Mississippi State's coach back then, and Craig Sword was the Bulldogs' leading scorer that day.
Kirkpatrick said work on this deal started back in May and went through a third-party company called Campio. A Mississippi State assistant coach visited, gave it a thumbs up and a deal came together. Both Ole Miss and Mississippi State tend to play one off-site, in-state game every season — the Rebels are playing Southern Miss in Biloxi on Dec. 23, for instance — and the Bulldogs are staying up north this year.
Even though Cadence Bank Arena might not be fundamentally different from Mississippi State's Humphrey Coliseum, a lot of work is still going into making sure everything works and everyone's comfortable while they're away from home.
"When they're at their Coliseum, they have everything in place," Kirkpatrick said. "When they're coming to some place totally new and different, then it's an incredible amount of planning that goes into it. Everything from how their locker rooms will be set to broadcasting the game on the ESPN app to get all of that set to prepare for the media that will be here for the radio and TV broadcast tables. It's just an incredible amount of planning between us and the university to make sure that we have all of their needs met and that we're able to put on a game at the caliber that they're accustomed to."
This year's game will also have the extra wrinkle of setting up a basketball court on top of the arena's ice sheet. Cadence Bank Arena has already hosted Disney on Ice and also maintains a rink for public ice-skating sessions. That kind of court conversion may be common at the NBA/NHL level, but not so much in Tupelo.
"Putting the basketball court down any time is labor intensive," Kirkpatrick said. "But when we have the ice floor down, then you have to cover the ice floor and then put the court down on top of that. So, it is a little bit more labor intensive. It takes a little more time to do that."
In the future, Kirkpatrick hopes that Cadence Bank Arena could host more games, including hosting Ole Miss. He added that the last time Ole Miss played in Tupelo was in 2004.
"I would love to have Ole Miss, to host an Ole Miss game again to support both fanbases," Kirkpatrick said. "I think when they come and see the experience that they have and see the fan turnout here, I would hope that we would see them again, for sure."
