Virginia Basketball Players Pumped About JPJ Upgrades

Several upgrades/changes to the John Paul Jones Arena are near completion. One Virginia basketball fans will be able to clearly notice is the new videoboard/scoreboard over the court.

UPDATE: This beast is almost done! 🔶⚔️🔷 #GoHoos pic.twitter.com/jmSqqh1FFU

— Virginia Basketball (@UVAMensHoops) October 17, 2017

In his recent “Cavalier Notebook” feature, Virginia Sports Director of News Content Jeff White provided the following description of JPJ’s impressive new feature (click here to read White’s full article).

The videoboards used since the arena opened in 2006 were approximately 9 feet tall and 16 feet wide. The new boards are about 14 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Moreover, their display will be true high definition, and the resolution will be significantly better than on the previous videoboards.

This is believed to the first videoboard in a college on-campus college arena with a pixel pitch of 4 millimeters. Pixel pitch measures the distance between the LED pixels. The lower the number, the higher the resolution. The pixel pitch of the original videoboards was 10mm.

Changes to the locker room and team spaces could be completed as soon as Friday, October 20, which would be ideal considering head coach Tony Bennett and company are expected to host some top prospects on Grounds this weekend.

White writes that this project “includes nutrition stations, a film room, a study area, rest-and-recovery station, and a players’ lounge, as well as a redesigned locker room.”

“It’s going to be awesome,” second year guard Kyle Guy said. “It’ll help us a lot in recruiting. They have sleeping pods in there and I thought those only existed at Google (smiles). It’ll be pretty awesome.”

“I can’t wait,” second year point guard Ty Jerome said with a smile. The New York native added that he is looking forward to “everything, really” about the locker room/team space upgrades.

Of the project, redshirt sophomore forward Mamadi Diakite said: “Yeah that’s very exciting. We’re all excited to get back to our locker room and live there (smiles).”

Coach Bennett told White that the finished product will be “beautiful” and “special” for current and future players. He also expects it to help with recruiting.