College Park, Md. ? The building has no air conditioning, no replay screens and no trendy concession stands.

It never had a corporate name, luxury suites or loud music blaring over the public address system.

Cole Fieldhouse didn’t change much in 47 years. It didn’t have to.

“The great thing about Cole is, when we play the last game here it will still be a great arena to watch a basketball game in,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said. “That’s never changed. Every seat has had a great sight line, and in terms of game day, this is still an outstanding place to watch basketball.”

The scene of several of the most memorable moments in college basketball history, Cole Fieldhouse will hold its final game today, when second-ranked Maryland ends its 637-game run at the grand arena against Virginia.

Next season, the Terrapins will move across campus into the lavish Comcast Center, a 17,100-seat facility that will feature 20 corporate suites, a million-dollar scoreboard and new coaches’ offices for most of the school’s sports teams.

But it won’t have the two things that made Cole Fieldhouse one of the most nation’s most distinguished basketball arenas: a rich history, and the intimacy of 14,500 fans crammed together around a basketball court.

“Cole Fieldhouse has been one of the great venues in sport, and college basketball in particular,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “I have always considered it an honor to go up there and play not just against Maryland, but in that grand old building. It has seen some amazing games and great players.”

Plenty of surprises, too. Duke’s 87-73 loss at Maryland last month marked the seventh time a No. 1 team has lost at Cole  the highest casualty rate of any arena in the country.

Cole’s most notable shocker occurred decades earlier, when unheralded Texas Western  a team comprised solely of black players  defeated Kentucky 72-65 in the 1966 NCAA championship game.

It was one of two Final Fours held at Cole. The other, in 1970, saw UCLA defeat Jacksonville 80-69 Â the fourth of an unprecedented seven straight NCAA titles won by coach John Wooden.

That also happened to be the first season at Maryland for coach Lefty Driesell, who ultimately transformed a mediocre basketball program into a perennial contender in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Driesell’s 17-year run ended in 1986 in the wake of the cocaine-induced death of Len Bias, but that did little to diminish his memory of a glorious era at Cole.

“There is a lot of history at Cole Fieldhouse. There were a lot of great games played there,” Driesell said. “I hate to see them close it. There’s so much good about it. It was a great place to coach.”

Williams seems to think so. He’s 154-35 at Cole, and has lost only one home game in the last two seasons. But his love for the building began long before he took the job in 1989.

“My favorite memory of Cole was in my senior year of high school when I was recruited by Maryland,” said Williams, one of a handful of people to go through the school as both a player and coach. “I had never seen an arena of that size for basketball before. From that day on, I knew that I wanted to go to the University of Maryland to play basketball.”

Cole will continue to serve as a place where students can play intramural games, take exams and receive their diplomas.