To those in attendance

I noticed that in the box score attendance for the USF game was listed at 2344. Does that ssem accurate, and is attendace increasing? Seems to me that we have been at about 1300 in the recent past. Did the students make a strong showing? Are we attracting additional portland area folks?

Just curious.

Welcome back, Rochin54!!! How was Israel?

Anyway... I thought the crowd was great, actually. The studets filled their whole section and had lots of spill-over up behind the hoop too. They were standing and shouting the whole game... almost reminded me of 2004-05.
Most of the crowd was sitting along the sidelines too, so while the bleachers were pretty empty, the grandstands looked full. And the crowd was standing and into it at the end of the game too...

Overall our attendance is up for this season so far, but almost every home game has been Friday or Saturday night... the real test will be tonight and the rest of the Monday night games.

Still, you've got to give good props to the UP marketing team, because the crowds have been much better this year for sure.

Crowd looked full and raucous on the CSN broadcast. Great showing.

I was there and for a Monday night it was pretty impressive attendance. The student section had a couple diehards there but most people were sitting down. The bleachers had a respectable amount of people around.

But overall... I would agree, pretty decent attendance for a Monday night.

Thanks for support to all of you, its been hard rebuilding purple pride, and the upcoming classes are not near as excited to come out to games no matter how hard we try. It will take a winning record to get the student level to that of my freshman year of 04-05 which was amazing! If you guys have any ideas on how to get more students, please enlighten me.

Nah nah... you are doing good, spogue. The students were great for Saturday night.

Honestly, the real stumbling block are the games on Monday night. Back in '04-'05, the games were Thursday-Saturday, which was MUCH more conducive to there being a good atmosphere than Saturday-Monday. I mean... who really wants to get crazy on a Monday night? Only the diehards.

But I did notice one thing last night... there were a few guys in the front standing up, and then a few people scattered here and there throughout the student section. I would try to consolidate all the fans that want to stand and cheer to at least maybe help get the other students into it. I know that's not easy to do when people are sitting with their friends and don't want to move, but it's worth a shot to try and get together the people who are there to cheer.

But overall I'd say to keep it up on those Saturdays. The more fun kids have on those days, the more they will be willing to come on Monday night too.

Good point... focus on the Saturday games. And focus on the true die hard crazy fans. Get your core group strong, and the rest will follow (even on Mondays...)

Again, you guys were great on Saturday. Thanks for your efforts! From what I see & read out there, our students seem to show up in greater numbers than most of the rest of the conference (besides SMC & GU)...

A couple wins under the belt will make all the difference...

Why don't you try some body or face paint. Seriously, nothing like a select few HARDCORE students to get the other students cheering. One good thing I saw was a HS game where the students Papermached a small figure off the other teams maskot and hung it on the end of a fishing line. It sent the whole student body over the edge when they pulled it out just before starting lineups. Get creative, I was really impressed with the Gonzaga student body last night on ESPN they pulled out alot of signs, etc.
The more students that show up passes the word around campus that the Chiles Center is the place to be for Pilots Mens Basketball.
Winning is not always the only way to attract students to the game, sometimes the atmosphere alone can do it.
But winning sure HELPS!


Good Luck,

Mesa Pilot 1

I was just browsing over the WCC stats (yikes... am I obsessed or what?) and I saw something interesting... UP is currently third in the league in average attendance, behind GU and SMC.

I'm sure those numbers are helped out by the games against UO and BYU, but still... I'd say that those numbers are pretty darn good. And we can expect another good bump from the GU and SMC home games.

Here are the WCC totals, with the number of home games, total attendance, and average attendance.

Gonzaga: 9-54000 6000
Saint Mary's: 11-29778 2707
Portland: 7-15888 2270
San Diego: 9-19398 2155
Loyola Marymount: 8-15918 1990
Santa Clara: 8-14753 1844
Pepperdine: 5-7554 1511
San Francisco: 6-4663 777

Is that number for USF correct? Only 777 average? They were usually #2 or #3 in the league... tough year down there all around.

I am surprised by the USD number as well... they usually play in front of a couple hundred at best....

That 777 number seems odd, too...

The USF attendance figure seemed odd, so I checked out the box scores. They played 6 games at home, but there are attendance figures for only 4 of those games.

The four games totaled 4663, or about 1166 per game. If you average that 4663 over 6 games the number comes out to 777.

1166 isn't great either, but it's better that 777.

Wow - the USD number is certainly surprising. The Jenny Craig Pavillion always seems to be empty when seen on TV or described on radio. That is great that we're getting larger attendance numbers though!

JENNY CRAIG is usually deserted if you check.

First off, the box attendance for the 9 games was 16222, not 19398.

that's about 1802 per game.

One game against cross-town SD State was 5100. Take that out, and the rest of the games averaged about 1390 per game.

1390 still seems high for ol Jenny. I would have guessed they'd be at the 700 mark. Maybe they've increased attendance a bit with grier.

Attendance is definitely starting to increase with Grier. Seeming USD returns their whole team next year and may be in the mix at the very top of the conference, they will probably have some pretty bug attendance numbers next year.