The WVU Coliseum is a 14,000-seat multi-purpose arena located on the Evansdale campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. The circular arena features a poured concrete roof. It was built with state funds and replaced the WVU Fieldhouse, which seated 6,000. History The Coliseum, which opened in 1970, has more than of space. It is home to West Virginia University Mountaineers sports teams, including the men's and women's basketball teams, men's wrestling, and women's volleyball and gymnastics. There is also a weight room located in the lower level of the Coliseum. The arena has nearly 100 offices, 13 lecture and seminar rooms, a dance studio, safety lab, racquetball and squash courts, and the Jerry West Mountaineer Room, which holds nearly 150 people for meetings. The arena also has more than 1,000 individual locker units in various dressing rooms available for students and staff. The Coliseum has been used for music concerts but the concrete roof has poor sound distribution properties, so other venues in town are more appropriate for this purpose. The arena was actually designed with poor acoustics; the designers cupped the ceiling so that crowd noise generated at basketball games would be directed back to the floor. The seating at the venue was also designed for optimized viewing during sporting events, making the setup for concerts to be not as optimal as other large arenas. The first event held at the Coliseum was a Grand Funk Railroad concert in 1970, with the first game then taking place on 1 December 1970. The Coliseum was one of the sites for games of the 1974 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. Other National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men's Division I college basketball events it has hosted include the ECAC South Region tournament organized by the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) in 1975 and 1976 and the Atlantic 10 Conference men's basketball tournament in 1984 and 1988. During the 1998-99 season, the Jerry West Lounge, named for WVU and NBA Hall-of-Famer Jerry West, was formally dedicated. A display showcasing the highlights of the Mountaineer great flanks the entrance to the lounge. In November 2005, the University announced that a life size bronze statue of West would adorn the Blue Gate entrance of the Coliseum, and the statue has since been installed there. Wests number is retired and a sign hangs over the seating section formerly designated Section 44 (now