IU Indianapolis opens up a new arena, era of school history with a win over Miami Middletown

For the longest time, IU Indianapolis didn’t have a home arena that you could brag about. Heck, you could be forgiven to not know where the heck “the Jungle” was on campus. I can easily say those days are long gone with today’s home opener and 113-76 victory over Miami of Ohio Middletown with the grand opening of the James T. Morris Arena just off of White River State Park.

But first, a preamble.

When IUPUI had their divorce and thus the loss of “Ooey-Pooey”, IU Indianapolis and Purdue University Indianapolis have both decided to not only engage in not only a great landgrab across of the city of Indianapolis but also focus on efforts to build civic monuments to present that their school is superior, both in the spirit of cooperation and also competition. This can be noted when one arrives on the corner of West and Michigan Street; where once it would have greeted you by entering the heart of IUPUI now instead has been split in half and is beset by dueling institutions, with Purdue building a colossus for higher education on their side of the property in the Academic Success Building, in addition to multiple dorms. Not to be outdone, IU Indy is building a biosciences lab off campus over at 16 Tech, an industrial park and entertainment center on the city’s west side.

Lost in this arms race was the fact that, when the two schools split off, IU Indianapolis took the athletics department, meaning it was up to them to maintain said program, which was a bit of a tall order as, in spite of being in the heart of one of America’s largest cities, athletics never was an important aspect of the university. Most of the facilities were constructed as a result of Indianapolis hosting the Pan America Games in 1987, including a series of tennis courts. These tennis courts, for years, would host an annual championship event in August until 2009 when the event moved to Atlanta, leading to the demolition of the facility.

In case you wondered what the facility looked like before it became a parking lot and the current arena.

As for the school, the lack of a proper gym wasn’t a problem for IUPUI as long as they were in the NAIA or Division II where facilities, at least back in those days, weren’t a priority for recruitment. Those players usually simply wanted to stay close to home and didn’t care if they weren’t playing in a 10K seat mega arena with decades of history behind them.

Until it was.

In 1998, IUPUI jumped from Division II to Division I, joining the Mid-Continent Conference as a replacement for Northeastern Illinois University, who dropped athletics entirely in a draconian cost-cutting measure, although to say IUPUI had a gameplan was, to be blunt, laughable. I’ve linked this article in the past, but basically, the transition to Division I required them to build everything from the ground up; cheerleaders, a fight song, any semblance of school pride. The school had none of those, yet in quick succession, made sure to have them ready by the new millennium.

Everything, except for the arena.

D-I schools playing in tiny gymnasiums isn’t unheard of, and if anything, you can easily find schools that can have their facilities be challenged by that of local high schools. The problem was that for IUPUI, they were playing in a state notorious for massive, 10,000 seat gyms at said high school level… and here they were, having games inside of what was essentially a converted practice gym next to the Olympic swimming pool. And it was like that for decades; playing games at the Indiana State Fairgrounds was a temporary solution (for the men, at least) to improve the presentation of the program, but having an actual, on-campus arena would have done a lot for not only team morale, but also to help start building the school’s reputation. It was often used as a reason to not go to IU Indianapolis; the school had no arena and no on-campus facilities to train.

And so… where those tennis courts used to stand, they broke ground on an actual, honest-to-goodness arena. And today, on November 2nd, 2026, IU Indianapolis had its first ever basketball game, where the Jaguars played Miami of Ohio… Middletown (that’s the last time I will ever do that joke).

Peyton Heiss led both teams with 20 points, with Kameron Tinsley following suit with 17, including scoring the first-ever points in arena history via an authoritative dunk. Five Jaguars got double digits as the game wasn’t even in doubt from the beginning, even if the score in the first half would insist otherwise. Tayvon Smith led the Thunderhawks with 16 points in the losing effort.

I didn’t actually go to this game in particular to view the game itself, admittingly. Because at the end of the day, the game was kind of pointless. Miami of Ohio Middletown is playing its final season ever before the school’s athletic department gets shut down, as a victim of small school consolidation that is consuming institutions nationwide, and with it, IU Indy will most likely have to find a new ham and egger to open the season at 11am against next year. It’s a win for the team, but because it’s not a Division I opponent, the NET rankings aren’t going to consider it as legitimate. And it was all about getting the guys their footing after the exhibition game down in Austin Peay in front of a home crowd. The purpose of today’s visit, for me at least, was to take in the sights of the new arena.

I rode in on bike this morning, and although there are few bicycle racks near Gate B, I feel like there should be additional racks around Gate A, off Ohio and Blake Street. It didn’t help that a golf cart blocked said racks at Gate B, and I ended up jury-rigging around one of the benches. Being a smaller arena, most of the patrons to games will go through the larger Gate A, though the additional two entrances on Blackford Street should help. My first mistake today was not getting breakfast before the game. My second mistake was then ordering UberEats and then seeing a spread for bacon croissant sandwiches and beignets made by the school’s catering for school staff and the press available in the practice gym. By the way… 8/10 bacon sandwich and 10/10 beignets. Those beignets were GONE.

I didn’t get too comfortable with this, however, as there was a fire alarm right when they were setting up concessions, forcing everyone to evacuate temporarily, although that wasn’t due to an actual fire. Speaking of concessions, if you’re expecting the arena to have a wacky, specialized food item exclusive to Jaguars events that costs $22 and you can share on social media, you’re probably going to be out of luck. They only sell your standard grub that you’d find at a movie theatre (at least before everyone wanted to be a poor man’s Alamo Drafthouse), and liquor. I was surprised to see that liquor was for sale today during the kids’ event.

The most unique feature of the arena, and I spoke with someone after the game about it was the lack of a hanging scoreboard. IU Indy opted for two billboards on the corners of the arena instead and I believe this was for two reasons; the first was for acoustics, and that was to ensure that most of the sound reverberates throughout the arena instead of bouncing off of a massive object that is hanging off the ceiling. And the second is that you have to pay attention to the court instead of jerking your neck up and staring at the scoreboard, which in today’s doomscrolling/brainrot/what-have-you era of staring obsessively at media devices, I get it.

Also, our signs from the Coliseum are back… sans Northern Illinois. I spoke with Luke Bosso about the omission, and he told me that it’ll be ready when its ready, which I believe is code for “when the league has it made for us”. I also spoke with additional staff about the venue and they are excited about the fact that they now have a facility that they can turn around and use for concerts and conventions. They aren’t sure who or what they can get as their first act, but being a 4K seat venue in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, it does open the door for smaller acts, similar to what the Old National Centre (yes, the Murat Theatre but I have to be that guy) get. I think the acoustics would be wonderful.

My Random Thoughts:

1. Kids improve everything… unless you’re a custodian. A lot of unaware viewers to these Monday games probably weren’t clued in as to why all of these games probably had children, but the NCAA likes to engage in reading programs to encourage improving literacy rates, but really the kids just liked being out of school. And frankly, at their age and the fact that they probably won’t follow IU Indy athletics, they liked everything they saw. They cheered when IU Indy scored, they cheered when Miami Middletown scored, they cheered when someone dunked, they cheered when a guy got fouled. The only problem was that most of the crowd left around halftime, making the venue feel empty as a result. It’s definitely going to be the highest attended game this season. That said, the aftermath looked like Lucas Oil Stadium with food, bottles, and unwanted knapsacks strewn all over the place.
2. Conversely, I had wished that IU Indy would have at least tried for a more legitimate opponent for the grand opening of the venue; I was thinking a lot about how New Haven welcomed their D-I debut by bringing in Penn State, who are not known at all for their basketball, but are a Big Ten team regardless of the fact they usually finish 18th out of 18 teams. Despite having “Indiana University” in the title, IU Indy isn’t exactly going to get marquee schools to come downtown unless we build a winning reputation. But the school wanted a win to start the venue off and chose a more conservative approach for an opponent.
3. I wore my Fishers Freight jersey to the game because, I actually don’t have any IU Indianapolis gear that was my size in time for the game, although that was a blessing in disguise as a lady from the Indy Fuel/Fishers Freight/Bloomington Bison conglomerate actually saw me and was very happy to see me wearing it. I told her I don’t have season tickets, but she was delighted to see a fan out in the wild wearing Freight merchandise. You’ll see me towards the end of the game talking to Bosso once the parade of kiddies left, leaving ample seating.

Anyway, with that game out of the way, the IU Indy women have their home opener on November 5th against SIU Edwardsville at 6:30pm Eastern, and then the men are back on November 7th, at 5pm against University of Tennessee Martin.