It takes 35 dump trucks, 40 tractor trailers, 20 fork lifts, five bull dozers, 93,500 square feet of carpet and approximately 500 people to convert the Reliant Stadium from a rodeo arena to a basketball hotbed in less than two weeks, but Reliant Park general manager Mark Miller says this flip is actually one of the most leisurely that the massive stadium has ever seen.

This time last year, when Houston hosted the NCAA South regionals, games were already in progress. But on Friday afternoon, the court was barely a strip wide at 2:45 p.m., although Miller says it will be complete by evening, with all of the temporary seating installed by Monday.

"This is the longest tunaround we've had," says Miller. "Pretty much by Monday we'll be done. We had 80 hours in 2008 and 60 hours to get it done in 2010."

After the final performance of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo last Sunday, stadium workers took less than 24 hours to remove all the dirt from the arena in preparation for the stadium's next big event. "The last performance [by Jason Aldean] ended at 8 p.m. and the dirt was gone by 4:30 a.m.," Miller says.

On Friday, workers had put down a plywood base roughly two feet off the Reliant floor and began covering it with the hardwood basketball court. To make sure the court is level for next weekend's big games, workers are using a laser level "and go joint by joint, just like a construction project," Miller says.

While workers were laying the floor in the warm stadium, others began setting up temporary seats, passing chairs in a long human chain to make rows.

There are thousands of staff and volunteers working on the turnaround — some are local and some brought in with their companies. For its part, the NCAA has been tinkering for upwards of six months with making sure the decór and graphics are to their taste.

Check out our photos for a sneak peek of the transformation.