NCAA Conference Tournament Attendance: The embarrassing lows

It’s finally tournament time, but in the last week of the season we get to pile everyone on a bus, drive to the nearest major metropolitan area and watch the teams battle it out in their respective conference tournaments.  Lots of fans were excited, but one pair of fans seemingly less so.  Which brings us to this:

Number of games drawing fewer than 1,000 fans: 1!

Here are the 3 lowest attended games of last week:

3. Southern vs Alabama State – Only 1,022 showed up to Houston to see the Southern Jaguars take on the Alabama State Hornets.  Normally, 1,022 is enough to keep you way off the bottom three, but this week is a week of oft non-reported (and overreported) attendance.  Heck, the Big Ten didn’t even report attendance at the first three days of their tournament.  Those loyal to Southern went home satisfied as the Jaguars advaned with a 83-63 win.

2. Idaho State vs North Dakota – Meanwhile, in Reno, only 1,003 made their way down from Grand Forks and/or Pocatello to see some Big Sky hoops. Those that did were hopefully on their way out to all-you-can-eat-surf-and-turf-for-3.99 by the half because Idaho State throttled the FIGHTING #NULLs¹ of North Dakota, 83-49.  But both of these games are packed to the brim compared to our number one game…

1. FAU vs UTSA – In the first round of the Conference USA tournament, we saw the 12th and 13th seeds battle it out.  Earlier in the day, 280 people watched the Women’s First Round games.  FAU and UTSA couldn’t retain them for the men’s game an hour after the women’s game ended.  Only 220 were in attendance to see FAU advance 82-58 over the Roadrunners of UTSA.  Over the course of the season, this was the 22nd least attended game, and it was a conference tournament game!!! Here’s an action shot and a video of the shootaround:

#UTSA on the floor warming up for today’s 1st round #CUSAChamp game vs. Florida Atlantic. #BirdsUp pic.twitter.com/U7cvGlqHtk

— UTSA M Basketball (@UTSAMBB) March 8, 2016

So with that, we’ve closed the books on conference basketball and all that remains are the postseason tournaments. We’ll continue to monitor attendance over the next few weeks, but before that, let’s take a look at the (reduced) miscellany:

Smallest Power Conference attendance: ACC (FSU vs Boston College), 7,302.

Average attendance this week:  8,440, up 3,014 (55.5%) over last week, unsurprisingly.

And your full attendance numbers for the week:

1. They’re the Fighting Hawks but I hate to retire that joke