About Atlantis (the Resort and the Battle)
Wednesday, November 26, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Volleyball, Chris Harry
PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas -- To tell the story of the Battle 4 Atlantis, we probably need to visit the story of Atlantis itself. 
In 1994, a South African hotel magnate named Sol Kerzner (right) bought a series of floundering resort properties along a two-mile stretch of Paradise Island from famed talk-show host and entrepreneur Merv Griffin. When that purchase went down, tourism in the Bahamas was at an ebb (as was unemployment), but Kerzner had a vision to reinvigorate the local economy by building a state-of-the-art resort the likes of which the world had never seen.
The blueprints, of course, used the mythical “Lost City of Atlantis” as its theme. It took four years and $800 million to make Atlantis a reality, highlighted by what brochures call “the world's largest open-air marine environment” of 11 million gallons that are home to 50,000 sea creatures, representing 200 species, lagoons and waterfalls, plus the now-world famous Mayan Temple Waterslide complex.
[Note: Yes, I plan on partaking in the slides, including the ridiculously steep one and the one that takes you through a tube inside a shark tank (see video below).]
The Florida basketball team's chartered flight arrived here Monday night around 7:20 and went through customs in Nassau (above). The team checked in at Atlantis around 8:30, but Coach Billy Donovan sent them to their rooms for the night after a team meal.
On Tuesday morning, Donovan turned his players loose for three hours to roam the grounds (or go back to bed, which some did) before an afternoon meal. Ninety minutes later, the team reported for its one-hour practice in the Imperial Arena followed by another one-hour practice in an adjacent ballroom.
Not much time to sight-see, but then again that's not why they're here.
Which brings us to the tournament.
The Imperial Arena is actually the resort's Imperial Ballroom (see below). In 2010, local organizers and ESPN partnered to add the event to its schedule of sexy November non-conference, cross-sectional basketball games.
It costs about a half-million dollars to convert the ballroom -- and that means opening a bunch of temporary walls and removing the chandeliers that hang from the ceiling -- into an arena that seats 3,200. The inaugural event, in 2011, featured UCF, College of Charleston, Florida State, UMass, Connecticut, UNC-Ashville, Harvard and Utah.
Harvard won the tournament.
The tournament winners since have been Duke (2012) and Villanova (2013), but the 2014 field -- UF, Georgetown, Alabama-Birmingham, Wisconsin, North Carolina, UCLA, Oklahoma and Butler -- being touted as the event's best yet.
The Badgers, ranked third nationally, loom as the tournament favorite.
[So far, I really like the concept. And why not? I'm in the Bahamas for Thanksgiving week. But some may roll their eyes at the notion of a tournament in such a tight place, but watching UCLA and North Carolina, for example (which could happen), throw it up in a ballroom? Yeah, that would be cool.]
