The first college basketball game at Little Caesars Arena will be Michigan against Detroit Mercy on Dec. 16. It’s the first game of a doubleheader that will be followed by Michigan State against Oakland University. The games were announced during a news conference Tuesday morning outside the arena.
The first basketball game at Joe Louis Arena was a Michigan-Detroit Mercy matchup Dec. 12, 1979. U-M won, 85-72.
“This is exciting,” U-M coach John Beilein said Tuesday. ”I think there was a record number of conference calls as we tried to put this thing together.”
The MSU-Oakland matchup is the renewal of a yearly series that has alternated between the Breslin Center and the Palace of Auburn Hills.