renovation in the early 2000s. The middle of the three decks has a low ceiling and when the house lights are turned off during game play gives the distinct impression of watching a Cinemascope movie of basketball. For many years opposing coaches complained they had to coach their team from the baseline, making it very tough to communicate from the other end of the floor. This was due to the placement of the team benches on the baselines. However, beginning in the 2015–16 season, coaches were given typical coaching boxes that ran up the sideline, as in every other college gym. Now, even though their teams are still on the baseline, the coaches have the ability to roam the sideline up to the end of a regulation NCAA coaching box. History As Southeastern Conference basketball grew in popularity and Vanderbilt established itself as a basketball power, the seating capacity proved inadequate. The gymnasium had been designed in a way which made it readily expandable, and by the mid-1960s it seated 11,103. A conference championship run in 1966 led to even more demand for seats, and by the end of the decade the facility seated 15,581. It usually sold out, especially for conference games, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s Vanderbilt was consistently in the top ten for attendance in all of college basketball, a remarkable achievement for a middle-sized private institution. The arena hosted the SEC men's basketball tournament in 1984 and 1991. In the early 1990s the building served as the host site for a "Battle of the Boulevard" rivalry game between Lipscomb and Belmont, two other Nashville institutions with a long history of quality basketball. The game was moved to Memorial when it became apparent that demand for tickets would greatly outstrip their availability at Belmont's former home court, tiny Striplin Gymnasium. However, even event organizers themselves were shocked when the doubleheader between the women's and men's teams sold Memorial out by the halftime of the women's game. This event still (as of 2019) holds the all-time attendance record for an NAIA basketball game. In 1967, two events lent this landmark a deeper social-historical significance. On April 7th and 8th, 1967, as part of Vanderbilt’s annual student-organized Impact Symposium series, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke at Memorial Gym on “The Future of Integration,” U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond on “Conservative Individualism,” poet Allen Ginsberg on