Drake vs. UNI

[rworkman83]

The ISU or U of I game, whichever is in Cedar Falls in a given year, is probably always gonna be in the UNI dome for that reason.

I think Hartzell said after the ISU game this year that they won't be playing anymore basketball games in the dome. I went to the ISU game in the dome and it pretty much sucked from a fans point of view. I was also at the game last night as I'm a former Drake SID Intern and it was much better to watch a game in the McLeod Center than the dome. The place is nice, but I'm not even sure there were over 5,500 there...

[DaddyMac]

Yep.

I can't blame anybody, haven't been helping the cause myself. But I'll be there for the next two games at least.

Man this season has really flown by....

[cycloneworld]

But after watching our box scores for attendance, seeing a couple of our recent games, and reading a few posts on this board - I don't think ISU has much cause for slighting other schools in numbers of butts in seats. Definitely a case those who live in glass houses....

Seriously?

We haven't been good 2 years now. And we had 1 NCAA tournament appearance in 7 years. And we will still be 2nd or 3rd in attendance in the Big 12. We sucked last year and were 26th in the nation in attendance.

Comparing us now to UNI now is ridiculous. If UNI can't fill a 7,000 seat arena coming off the 3 best seasons in school history, 3 straight 20-win seasons, and 3 straight NCAA bids...when can they?

Think back to the seasons when we were good...attendance was huge and tickets were hard to come by. We still draw well even though we have had one good season since Tinsley left.

[wonkadog]

Preach on cycloneworld...just takes a step back to see how good our attendance actually is. Meanwhile, UNI's fans seemed to have migrated south for the winter?? Scratch that, I guess Iowa's attendance hasn't been anything special either...

[DaddyMac]

How many butts in seats have you guys seen the last couple games?

If I remember right, they have an enrollment of around 13K, ISU 25K plus. Maybe they were good the last few years, but home stretch of this season they aren't anything special, so you can understand the waning interest. It's the same here. Where you do have traction in your arguement is the fact this was an in-state game. Of course I made an ISU/UNI game at Hilton a few years ago and there were maybe 5-7K fans there, so it's hardly unprecedented. Compliment that with our attendance for the Drake game this year as well.

Also, we weren't supposed to suck last year. That probably has plenty to do with it. We routinely average around 11,500 or so every year. Not exactly earth shattering for an arena that holds 14K. We can't play that JTS game of "104% attendance to capacity". And UNI, school roughly half our size is only 4-5K behind us. They averaged 6700 last season outside the McLeod center - so they're actually well ahead of us for the capcity game, all things being equal.

The slam was on "bandwagon fans". So KU comes to town, or we're an NCAA team and we put 13K in the stands, but when we're sub-NIT we only put in 8K... how is that different? I guess I would look at that to be the definition of bandwagon fans.

And Wonk, where I'll take exception to that statement is that ticket sales are good, attendance... ehhh. And as much as I don't want to say this, we can hardly slam Iowa given they're ahead of us in attendance every year.

Note: I'm only attributing this in defense of UNI. Iowa sucks and we all acknowledge it.