A new era for UH basketball at its new home, the Fertitta...

At a recent practice, University of Houston senior point guard Galen Robinson Jr. took in his surroundings in what felt like a road game.

Except Robinson and the Cougars were getting one of the first glimpses of the new Fertitta Center.

“It kind of felt like the night before we have an away game when we are in the other team’s gym,” Robinson said. “It didn’t even feel like Hofheinz (Pavilion) anymore. Taking it all in almost brought a tear to my eye.”

The Cougars will usher in a new era at 8 p.m. Saturday with the official opening of the Fertitta Center for a sold-out game against No. 18 Oregon.

Chris Pezman, UH’s vice president of intercollegiate athletics, said the opening will be a “historic night” as the Cougars add “another premier facility to our inventory.”

A $60 million transformation from the former Hofheinz Pavilion, the Cougars’ home for nearly 48 years, to the Fertitta Center will offer all the modern bells and whistles.

Among the improvements: a reconfigured bowl that will move midcourt seating closer to the action, two 60-feet-wide by 15-feet-tall video boards on both ends of the arena and video boards throughout the arena, a new audio system, new lighting and more than 700 premium seats.

Seating capacity decreased from 8,479 at Hofheinz Pavilion to 7,100 at Fertitta Center, which will serve as the home for the men’s and women’s basketball programs and volleyball team.

“It’s going to have very much the professional arena feel,” said T.J. Meagher, UH’s senior associate athletics director for capital projects.

One of the biggest changes, Meagher said, is a seating bowl that will bring fans “much closer to the floor.” Midcourt front-row seats that once were 30 feet from the sideline are now 10 feet away.

“Most people will tell you it was hard to feel like a home-court advantage in Hofheinz because there was all that space around the court that just pushed the distance away,” Meagher said.

Along with premium seating on the arena’s south side (Holman Street entrance), UH also will offer a Legends Club, complete with VIP-type amenities for attendees with courtside tickets. In addition, Meagher said Fertitta Center will offer 30 designated points of sale for concession items, a fan shop and expanded restrooms.

The student section — named “The Cage” during a campus-wide contest — will consist of 330 floor-level bleacher seats opposite the team benches. Students passed a referendum in 2012 to increase a student service fee to help fund construction of TDECU Stadium and renovation of the basketball arena.

“That excitement, energy and noise is what drives the excitement in the building with our fans,” Meagher said of the students’ presence closer to the court.

An NCAA Tournament look to it

With his team coming off the school’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in nearly a decade and picked this season to challenge in the American Athletic Conference, UH coach Kelvin Sampson said the goal is to create the type of home-court advantage seen at other college venues. UH enters Saturday with a 19-game home winning streak, all during its relocation to Texas Southern’s H&PE Arena, that is tied with Charleston and Montana for the second-longest active streak in the nation.

“It just shows you if you win, they’ll come. They’re not going to come unless you win,” Sampson said. “I’ll know that our program has arrived (when fans) come to see us play and not the people we’re playing against.”

The wood floor — featuring a UH logo at midcourt, the AAC logo at two corners, and “Cougars” and “Houston” on the baselines — is the same used throughout the NCAA Tournament.

“Same make and model, as if every day we’re playing in the NCAA Tournament” Meagher said.

As part of a naming rights agreement, the courtside will be named The Howie Lorch & Elvin Hayes Courtside. Lorch, a student manager for the Cougars, and Hayes, a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest players in school history, were college roommates in the late 1960s.

The arena’s exterior also will have a new look, similar to the adjacent Guy V. Lewis Development Facility that opened in 2016.

While the first game is Saturday (the UH women play Texas A&M on Dec. 6), the school held a ceremonial ribbon cutting Thursday night as part of a ceremony to induct Tilman Fertitta, the arena’s namesake, into the UH Athletics Hall of Honor. Fertitta, chairman of the university’s board of regents, Rockets owner and CEO of a business empire that includes the Landry’s restaurant group and Golden Nugget casinos, gave a $20 million gift — the largest individual donation ever to the athletic department — toward the cost of renovating the arena.

“Tilman has given our athletic program a new level of confidence,” UH president Renu Khator said. “His impact on the way we think about and approach athletics and the way we go after big dreams is enormous.”

‘Appreciative’ the word of choice

The Fertitta Center also will be used as a multipurpose arena in an effort to generate additional revenue. The first non-university event will be a Harlem Globetrotters game in mid-February.

Now with the development center and Fertitta Center in place, Sampson said the Cougars are at least on par with other schools in the conference.

“I don’t know if this puts us ahead of anybody,” he said. “It just puts us even. I wouldn’t trade our combination of the Guy V. Lewis Development Facility and Fertitta Center. Memphis has this, Connecticut has this, Wichita State has this, Cincinnati has it, Temple has it, and now we have it.

“I think the one word is just ‘appreciative.’ I’m very appreciative. I speak for a lot of people. You don’t take this for granted.”

joseph.duarte@chron.com

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