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On Thursday, nearly back to back, Marquette women’s basketball and volleyball fired off tweets about the brand new video board in the McGuire Center.
The Al is looking sharp! What a great addition! #muwbb pic.twitter.com/os1MNAbpoC
— Marquette WBB (@MarquetteWBB) May 16, 2019
Loving the new addition in the Al! Can’t wait to see it in action! #muvb pic.twitter.com/wUuQy1zZ4P
— Marquette Volleyball (@MarquetteVB) May 16, 2019
Now, I don’t want to get conspiratorial on you here, but I think that one of these pictures — the volleyball one — is a “live” image, while the other — women’s basketball — is not.
You’ll notice the scaffolding in the WBB picture that is magically not there three minutes later when VB posts their picture. On top of that, the VB picture appears to have video screens set up and running on the north end of the arena. Given the fact that we’re heading into Commencement Weekend on campus, it makes sense that the arena is set and ready to go for events that need video screens. It also makes sense that the scaffolding is long gone.
While the VB picture is the newer picture, it’s the WBB picture that’s actually more useful to us. There we can see what is at least the working plan for the default basketball settings for the video board. Team scores and time remaining on the left, ads on the right, video/images in the middle, and points, rebounds, assists, and fouls for the players currently on the floor. Given the arrangement of the scaffolding at the time, it’s unclear what the bottom row is, but the safe bet is the most recent foul for each team and timeouts remaining.
A minor quibble: We couldn’t test this thing and then put a picture out with a women’s basketball picture displayed on the board? C’mon. Think, McFly, think!
We still don’t know what the board will look like for volleyball, but I would imagine it would be a more subtle change. Drop the timer from the left side in favor of a match score underneath the current set score, and the rest of it just fixes itself from there. It might also be a fairly drastic change. It’s essentially just a gigantic computer screen, and the athletic department staff can program it to display whatever they want whenever they want. We’ll have to wait until closer to if not actually all the way into August or September to find out.