George Mason University Patriots at EagleBank Arena

The Patriots men’s basketball team has played since 1985 at EagleBank Arena, located on George Mason’s Fairfax, Virginia, campus. The first game was played there against Maryland on Nov. 26, 1985. The multipurpose arena has a capacity of 7,860, and the 2006-07 team broke the single-season attendance record previously set by the inaugural 1985-86 season. Sections 108, 109, 123 and 124 are reserved for George Mason’s student seating.

George Mason Patriots Men’s Basketball History

The Patriots men’s basketball team has been active since 1966. The program became a Division I team in the 1978-1979 season, which was spent as an independent before joining the Eastern College Athletic Conference from 1979 to 1985, the Colonial Athletic Association from 1985 to 2013 and the Atlantic 10 Conference from 2013 to the present.

Head coach Dave Paulsen took over at George Mason in 2016. Before that, the program’s all-time winningest coach was Jim Larrañaga, who posted a 273-164 record across 437 games in 14 years. Larrañaga led the Patriots to five NCAA tournament appearances, including a 27-8 overall campaign in 2005-06 that ended with a 73-58 loss to Florida in the Final Four.

A notable former player is the late Carlos Yates, who played at George Mason from 1981 to 1985. Yates was the Patriots’ all-time leading scorer as well as the owner of the highest single-season scoring average at 26.8 points per game as a sophomore in 1982-83. He scored 2,420 points, all before the three-point line was implemented in college basketball.

George Mason’s two most heated rivalries are with the George Washington Colonials (the Revolutionary Rivalry) and the VCU Rams, located just under five hours away in Richmond, Virginia. VCU moved from the CAA to the A-10 one year before George Mason made the switch. George Washington has been in the A-10 since before the conference adopted its current name in 1982.

The Patriots were originally called the Marauders from 1966 to around 1969. It’s still unclear why the mascot was switched.