Friday night’s college basketball game at Oral Roberts was played in unusual weather conditions. It was a rather strange scene and created quite the hazard.
Yes, hoops are played indoor. It was neither raining nor snowing in Tulsa. A tornado did not hit.
Nothing like that. The weather conditions were created through artificial means!
Between the Golden Eagles being announced during pregame and the national anthem, a good amount of fireworks were used inside of the Mabee Center before tipoff. Whomever was in charge of the pyrotechnics did not quite think it through.
A massive cloud of smoke hovered over the court during warmups. Visibility was so poor that it was impossible to see from one end of the floor to the other. Players had to walk through the smoke during layup lines and tried to clear it out as best they could.
Here is how it looked with less than two minutes and 30 seconds until tipoff:
The game was unable to begin as scheduled. It was put on pause for a few extra minutes to make sure that the players could see the court and eventually got underway.
As it did, the cloud of smoke slowly lifted toward the roof. There was no escape.
According to boots on the ground, it took more than eight minutes of game time for the smoke to finally dissipate. The air finally cleared by the under 12-minute timeout. Nearly an entire half of basketball was played with smoke in the air.
Oral Roberts did not think this one through and it showed. Using pyrotechnics, which create smoke, while inside of an arena without any ventilation was a terrible idea and it seems like someone should have foreseen the pretty obvious issue.
The Golden Eagles need to go back to the drawing board. It’s time to retire the pregame fireworks at college basketball games.