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GREENSBORO — Seeking to raise its local profile and upgrade the strength of its home schedule, UNCG will move most and perhaps all of its men's basketball games from Fleming Gymnasium to the Greensboro Coliseum starting next season, sources close the program said this week.

University and coliseum officials have called a news conference at noon Friday to announce the change of venue. Mike Hirschman, UNCG's sports information director, declined to discuss the subject of the news conference Wednesday.

The move to a facility 10 times the size of Fleming, the school's 1,833-seat on-campus gym, represents UNCG's most aggressive sports marketing effort since a successful bid to serve as host for the NCAA Division I women's soccer championships in 1997 and '98.

The program, which joined NCAA Division I play in 1991, does not expect to fill the new place on a regular basis. For most games, large portions of the upper deck are likely to be covered by black curtains.

In moving the games one mile southwest of campus, the university hopes the full-time affiliation with the coliseum, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2009, will enhance recruiting. It also anticipates the building's status as host of several upcoming ACC tournaments will attract that league's members to play the Spartans in Greensboro.

To that end, the university has hired Fred Barakat, the ACC's former director of basketball operations, as a scheduling consultant, sources said. Barakat, who retired from the conference after the 2006-07 season, is a well-connected administrator and former coach whose phone calls to others in college basketball seldom go unreturned.

UNCG has played occasional home games at the coliseum in the past and is scheduled to face nationally ranked Davidson there Feb. 5. Results of those efforts have been mixed; Southern Conference games haven't been big draws, but a sellout crowd of 21,124 saw Duke defeat the Spartans on Dec. 31, 2005.

Nelson Bobb, UNCG's athletics director, called the game "a great day for Greensboro." The gathering remains the largest to watch any UNCG sporting event.

There is some risk involved in the move. Fleming, located only steps away from the heart of campus housing, can be a difficult place for opponents. The Spartans will lose the intimacy of a gym, but will try to persuade students to make the quick shuttle ride to Lee Street, where a modern and historically significant arena awaits.

Fleming Gym, housed in the Health and Human Performance Building, isn't going anywhere. It will remain the home of Spartans women's basketball and volleyball.

But its marquee tenant is poised to vacate only two years after Fleming was renovated to include chair-back seating in the lower half of both sides. The facility was named Dec. 1, 1994, after Michael B. Fleming, a benefactor and former member of the board of trustees who advocated the university's general growth in intercollegiate athletics. At the time, UNCG's advancement from NCAA Division III to Division I, completed from 1987 to '91, was the fastest transition in the association's history.

The NCAA tournament will come to the coliseum for the 12th time when first- and second-round games are held there in March 2009. The facility has been the home of 21 ACC men's tournaments and is scheduled to serve as host in 2010-11 and 2013-15.

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels@news-record.com