Taking a microscope – literally – to USD/SDSU facility sketches

We played a little game of “spot the difference” in the Argus Leader sports department when USD sports information coordinator Tom Berg sent out a revised rendering of what the school’s basketball arena might look like. 

The school officially announced Wednesday a $20 million gift from Sanford that will help pay for the arena. The renderings were included in the announcement.

The first rendering is below. Take a close look at the scoreboard and you’ll see what originally appears to be USD with 12 points and SDSU with 68. 

The original sketch.

The score of the game in the original rendering appears to show USD with “12”

A few hours later, Berg sent out a revised image. On closer inspection, we discovered that USD’s score was changed to 82. Berg said the score in the original image is 72 (zooming in on the sketch, it’s difficult to tell one way or another) and he said they changed the score to make it more readable. The original 72-68 score was the final of USD’s men’s basketball game against SDSU earlier this year in the DakotaDome. 

USD’s score was changed to “82” in the second rendering.

If nothing else, the change shows the attention to detail in renderings such as these. They could have left the scoreboard blank but instead put up a score of a recent victory that means a lot to the program.

One other thing that was changed: the number of fouls. The revised version has USD with two fouls instead of five. 

South Dakota State has some interesting things of its own in its sketches. The school’s drawings from a proposed practice facility show a football game going on at the same time as a track meet – complete with a hammer throw in one corner and shot put in the other. Perhaps combining track meets and football games is the wave of the future.

The combined football game/track meet day.