It didn’t take long for San Diego State’s basketball team to learn this is not an ordinary road trip.
At Final Fours in domed NFL stadiums, it is raised 27 inches. “Like you’re a stage,” Aztecs forward Jaedon LeDee said. To that end, and after a few years of dreadful shooting, the NCAA added a Thursday practice to give teams three chances to adjust. There’s a mandatory open practice Friday that fans can watch for free, plus an optional shootaround Saturday morning.
“Even sometimes in college,” Bradley said, “if I have to get back to my roots and find myself, I’ll go outside and shoot some hoops.” “I think I like it more than the last couple gyms we were in,” Parrish said of 72,000-seat NRG Stadium. “It doesn’t really bother me as much.”“We don’t shoot it well in smaller arenas sometimes,” he said. “We’ll see what it is. Maybe this will help us.”It couldn’t have worked out better for LeDee. His winding college basketball journey — Ohio State to TCU to SDSU — has led him back home to Houston. He grew up just north of the city and attended The Kinkaid School.