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Oakland University paints new basketball court like black top (Photo)

By Cameron La Fontaine

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Oakland University painted a sweet new black-top basketball court in their home gym.

Oakland University is the latest basketball program to go away from a traditional basketball court after they stained their court at the Athletics Center O’rena black, creating a new black-top type feel. It’s actually pretty awesome and continues a trend that Oregon started with the changing of their court in 2011.

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The black-top court is the first of its kind to hit the college basketball scene and Oakland coach Greg Kampe seems extremely excited about it and I’m sure that players are as well. I certainly hope Kampe is kidding about chain link nets, because that would definitely result in some players losing fingers.

In 2011, Oregon unveiled their new basketball court which went away from traditional courts, and was of course an Oregon thing to do with their consistent un-matched style in uniforms in both football and basketball.

Oakland University continuing this trend probably means this type of court staining will continue in college basketball considering many schools like to stand out and if the NCAA is going to allow it, why not?

Oakland men’s basketball has been in the NCAA Tournament out of the Horizon League three times since 2005 and their popularity as a Division I program is continuing to grow under Greg Kampe who has been the head coach at Oakland for 31 years.

Oakland finished just 16-17 this season and lost in the first round of the 2015 CIT to Eastern Illinois 97-91.

According to the Detroit News, Kampe didn’t just want to change the look of the court, but he also wanted the make the nets black or gray to look like chain-linked nets, but the NCAA wasn’t going to let him do that. The three point, and out-of-bounds lines will also be white and the court should be done by Oakland University’s graduation on May 1. 

It truly is a pretty cool looking court that reflects the black-top feel that most basketball players have grown up playing on since they were kids. It should be a lot of fun watching the Golden Grizzlies compete on the black-top painted court next season.

h/t Sports Illustrated

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