Nevada Wolf Pack-Sacramento State Hornets game featured a bat delay

With 5:40 to go in the second half of a 63-56 game between Nevada and Sacramento State Tuesday night, multiple bats began swooping around the court and forced the non-conference contest to stop for some time.

It is hard to tell, but there appears to be at least three or four of the nocturnal creatures flying around the court. Close friend of Mid-Major Madness @morrisoncrying snagged an in-stands view of the bat party.

Postgame, Nevada head coach Steve Alford had some less-fun comments about the “bat thing” as he put it.

“The bat thing is getting pretty embarrassing,” he told media post game. “And, it needs to be fixed. It’s uncalled for. We are a big-time basketball program and we shouldn’t be dealing with bats. We shouldn’t have a stoppage of play because we are dealing with diving bats. ... It can’t happen.”

What got me, is apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened at Lawlor Events Center. Local news outlet News4 reported in 2017 that a “colony of bats has taken over the University of Nevada’s Lawlor Events Center for the past several weeks.”

At the time, the outlet reported, there could have been up to 30 bats living in the arena. A local biologist confirmed to the outlet that the bats were just “passing through.”

Nevada plans to open a swanky new arena in Reno, but that isn’t happening until 2026-27 at the earliest estimates. In the meantime, I saw the Wolf Pack embrace the bat. Rename Lawlor the Bat Cave. Have a bat mascot. Shoot, have bat nights!

Fun Bat Facts

• Baby bats are called pups.
• Bats aren’t blind! Some bats have incredible vision, with both their eyes and through echolocation.
• Bats are pollinators! So, like bees, these cute little guys are useful for plants.
• Some male bats lactate.
• One of the largest bats, called a giant golden-crowned flying fox, has a wingspan upwards of five feet long