The Armed Forces Classic basketball game in Okinawa, Japan, Nov. 13 was called at halftime due to the slippery surface on the court, according to ESPN.
The temperature in Okinawa during the game was 79 degrees with 89 percent humidity, and it had rained the previous night. The field house did not have air conditioning.
The players from Gonzaga and Pittsburgh were slipping the whole first half. Pittsburgh’s James Robinson suffered a laceration on his right cheek after losing his footing and falling face-first to the floor.
"It was bad,'' Robinson told ESPN. "We got a feel when we came out for practice [Friday] but could tell it was slippery during warm-ups. It's unfortunate. This is such a great event. We wanted to finish it for them—the real heroes. I wanted to play the second half. I had already played a half with the injury.''
The Armed Forces Classic puts college basketball games in front of American troops wherever they are stationed around the world.
Connor Sports (Amasa, Mich.), the court manufacturer and installer, released a statement on its Facebook page after the game was cancelled:
“Connor Sports, as official provider of the court for the Armed Forces Classic, supports the decision to cancel tonight’s game. Our primary concern is the safety of the Gonzaga and Pittsburgh student-athletes. The significant heat and humidity conditions at Camp Foster in Okinawa, despite extensive pre-event review and discussions with event officials, resulted in conditions that did not provide optimum player safety. The surface provided by Connor Sports for tonight’s game is the same high-quality court used in past Armed Forces Classic games and also used at basketball games and tournaments sanctioned by major organizers across the globe.”
The floor was the Connor Sports Armed Forces Classic Quicklock. Installation was supervised by Connor Sports Technical Supervisor Bruce Haroldson, a Marine Corps veteran.
Connor Sports has provided the floor for the event since 2012.
This is the second game at a military facility that had to be called off because of a slippery floor. In 2012, Florida and Georgia left the court at a game in Jacksonville, Fla., according to ESPN.
