Connecticut’s athletic director says the university is looking for a sponsor to step forward and secure the naming rights for its planned basketball training center and has no plans to name the building after newly retired basketball coach Jim Calhoun, The Associated Press reports.
”There’s not been one point in the conversation about naming the building for Jim, because we’ve always, since I got here, been talking about the naming opportunity to raise money,” said Ward Manuel, who addressed the speculation Monday after Calhoun spoke at a chamber of commerce breakfast in Cromwell.
The facility, which is expected to cost more than $40 million, is being funded entirely by private donations.
It would be built adjacent to Gampel Pavilion on the site where the former football stadium was razed earlier this year. Plans call for separate practice courts for the men’s and women’s basketball teams, locker rooms, weight rooms, classrooms, a sports medicine center and offices for the basketball staff.
About $22 million of the $32 million needed to break ground on the center, the school said this week.
