Outdoor Game Becomes Big Event in Arizona

Arizona State Coach Charli Turner Thorne was looking for a way to draw attention to her women’s basketball program.

Then she heard an idea that intrigued her. You’re in Arizona. Why don’t you play a game outdoors?

“Nobody liked it except me,” Turner Thorne said, laughing at the memory.

Eventually, she convinced enough other people the idea had merit and now, three years later, it’s going to happen. Tonight, Arizona State will play No. 2 Tennessee at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, home of baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks.

They’ll be outdoors, under the stars, in the cool of a desert evening in what is believed to be the first college basketball game played in the open air. The crowd will be the largest for an Arizona State game and could be the largest for a women’s basketball game west of the Mississippi River.

“Really, there’s no downside to it,” Turner Thorne said. “It’s kind of a David-and-Goliath situation for us, so we have nothing to lose. We’re raising the awareness of women’s basketball, we’re raising money for breast-cancer research and it’s a fun event.”

More than 15,000 tickets have been sold, ensuring that Arizona State will break its attendance record of 5,271 and the Pacific 10 regular-season record of 9,783. The largest crowd for a women’s game in the western half of the country is 18,018 for a New Mexico-Texas El Paso game at Albuquerque, N.M.

The record is 24,597 for a Tennessee-Connecticut game at Knoxville, Tenn., in 1998.