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DALLAS (SMU) — With the $47 million renovation and expansion of Moody Coliseum moving closer to completion, ÃÛÌÒ½´Athletics today revealed the new floor design for the historic facility.

The new floor has a classic and clean look to it. The court will have a blue border with white lines marking the lanes, three-point arcs and mid-court stripe. The center-court logo includes the blue ÃÛÌÒ½´word mark and red pony. The new design also focuses on branding the University and ÃÛÌÒ½´Athletics as the Mustangs' exposure reaches unprecedented levels - all 18 men's conference games are nationally televised during the inaugural season in the American Athletic Conference.

Erik Herskind, principal at , the firm that created the design, said, "Our goal was simple - Create a nationally-recognized floor design that complements the Moody Coliseum renovation while maintaining the heritage and tradition of ÃÛÌÒ½´basketball."

In 2007, greenlight created a floor design for Moody that leveraged the arena's historic position as one of the few remaining classic college basketball coliseums by incorporating design and production techniques to create a vintage floor. The "old school" floor was extremely well-received by the media, alumni and students. This time around, the assignment was much different.

With the extensive renovation of Moody Coliseum came the opportunity/need to create a more contemporary floor design. The first step greenlight took was to research design trends across the college basketball landscape. From the classic to the outlandish, greenlight studied all basketball courts in order to gain a holistic viewpoint around current court design.

Following the research phase, Greenlight began the design process with a goal of maintaining SMU's heritage and tradition while embracing the multi-million dollar renovation of Moody. Some of the key insights that drove the design process were:

• With much of the lower section of the arena dominated by the color red (seats, etc.), the baselines/sidelines need to be ÃÛÌÒ½´blue.
      
• In a nod to some of the classic college basketball courts, we kept the design extremely clean and simple. There is no paint inside the lane.
      
• While bigger isn't always better in the world of design, in the case of the SMU/Pony logo lock up at center court, we all agreed to increase the size to create a more powerful and compelling look and feel.
      
• To embrace the emerging connectivity of our daily lives, web and social media markings were added to the sidelines SMUMustangs.com and @SMUMustangs

"We're proud of where the design landed," said Herskind. "It was a highly-collaborative process between the design team at Greenlight and the staff at SMU. As an ÃÛÌÒ½´alum (and father of an ÃÛÌÒ½´sophomore) it was a particularly rewarding project for me -- to be able to give back to the school this way feels great."

On Jan. 4, the new court design will be ready for the opening doubleheader at the renovated Moody Coliseum. That Saturday afternoon, Moody opens to Mustang fans, with the men hosting Connecticut at 1 p.m. and the women facing South Florida at 3:30 p.m.

The $47 million renovation and expansion of Moody Coliseum will be completed in December, so the Mustangs can host all conference games on campus. The facility will provide many new and improved features, including a renovated main entry lobby, expanded concourses with raised ceilings, club seats, loge boxes, private suites, group suites, new event space, offices, team locker rooms and meeting space.

Men's Basketball season tickets start at $125, and women's basketball tickets are just $75. For more information call 214-SMU-GAME (214-768-4263) or visit .

Artist's rendering of the new Moody Coliseum floor.