NCAA BASKETBALL
Year: Conferences: Teams:
Seasons Conferences Arenas All Tournaments NCAA Tournament Admin
The Summit
3700 Southwest Freeway
Houston, TX 77027
Opened: November 1, 1975
The Summit in Houston, Texas, was originally a multi-purpose arena that hosted sports events and concerts from 1975 to 2003. It was the former home of the Houston Rockets, and also hosted the NBA Finals and WNBA championships. In 2005, the building was converted and became the central campus of Lakewood Church, a megachurch led by Joel Osteen.

It was known as The Summit until 1998, when technology firm Compaq bought naming rights and dubbed it Compaq Center. That name was dropped when Toyota Center opened as a new and more advanced professional sports venue in the same city, and the building was leased to Lakewood Church. Seven years later, in 2010, the church bought the building outright.

In 1971, the National Basketball Association's San Diego Rockets were purchased by new ownership group Texas Sports Investments, who moved the franchise to Houston. The city, however, lacked an indoor arena suitable to host a major sports franchise. The largest arena in the city at the time was 34 year-old Sam Houston Coliseum, but the Rockets would not even consider using it as a temporary facility. Plans were immediately undertaken to construct the new venue that would become The Summit. The Rockets played their home games in various local facilities such as Hofheinz Pavilion and the Astrodome during the interim.

Completed in 1975 at a cost of $18 million, there was an Opening Night Spectacular called "Heart To Heart", benefitting the Baylor College of Medicine, The Methodist Hospital, and the Texas Heart Institute. Andy Williams was the headliner for that evening's extravaganza. The Summit represented a lavish new breed of sports arena, replete with amenities, that would help the NBA grow from a second-tier professional sport into the multibillion-dollar entertainment industry that it is today. The Omni in Atlanta (now the site of State Farm Arena), McNichols Sports Arena in Denver (now a parking lot for Empower Field at Mile High), and the Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio (now an open meadow in the process of being reclaimed by forest) were all constructed during this period and remained in service until the continued growth of the NBA sparked a new arena construction boom in the late 1990s.
Last 10 Games
Date Opponents Result
Dec 9, 2000BYU @ Rice 59 - 49
Dec 9, 2000Texas A&M @ North Carolina 60 - 82
Mar 22, 1986Auburn @ Louisville #76 - 84
Mar 20, 1986UNLV @ Auburn #63 - 70
Mar 20, 1986North Carolina @ Louisville #79 - 94
Dec 5, 1985Texas A&M @ Lamar 59 - 68
Nov 24, 1985UAB @ Duke 54 - 66
Nov 21, 1985UAB @ Texas A&M 69 - 68
Nov 21, 1985Lamar @ Duke 62 - 66
Mar 11, 1984Arkansas @ Houston $56 - 57

# - 1985-86 NCAA Tournament
$ - 1983-84 Southwest Conference Tournament