NCAA Basketball Attendance Week 15: The Highs and Lows

As we inch closer and closer to March, the haves and have-nots begin to separate, and we start to see attendance diverge. This week, as in last week, had quite a few games below 1,000 in attendance, but at the top, quite a few high attendance games have floated the average attendance up almost 6% this week. Let’s take a look:

Number of games drawing fewer than 1,000 fans: 34

Here are the 3 lowest attended games of last week:

3. USC Upstate vs Florida Gulf Coast University – Despite being DUNK CITY, FGCU wasn’t much of a draw for fans of the USC Upstate Spartans, who currently stand at the bottom of the Atlantic Sun conference. The middle-of-the-Atlantic-Sun-pack Eagles took home the victory in front of 345 fans. Factoring in that USC Upstate’s basketball arena has a capacity of only 878, this one doesn’t seem quite as bad.

2. Prairie View A&M vs Grambling State – MEANWHILE, IN THE SWAC.  What is often one of the nation’s worst conferences, only two teams sit above .500 in the SWAC this year. Neither of those teams are Prairie View A&M or Grambling State.  Both PV and Grambling teams sit at the bottom of an already awful conference, so it’s no surprise that only 313 were on hand to see the Panthers of Prairie View A&M jump out of last place in the conference with the win, their 3rd of the season. Generations from now, those 313 will tell their grandchildren that they were there for this pivotal moment in PVA&M basketball history.  Since Prairie View A&M is kind enough to stream all their games on Youtube, here’s a shot of the crowd at tipoff:

1. McNeese State vs New Orleans – Not to be outdone by their neighbors 188 miles west, McNeese State once again appears at the bottom of this list, only putting 302 butts in 8,500 seats against New Orleans. Never one to miss an opportunity, this gives me the chance to once again point out that McNeese State may have the ugliest arena in all of college basketball. I won’t even tell you about the city of Lake Charles itself.  Luckily, the home fans were given something to live for as the Cowboys took the win 87-76, putting McNeese State tied for 10th in the Southland. New Orleans sits a half game ahead in a three way tie for 7th.  On the Twitter dot com, they’re not even pretending to have fans:

As always, the miscellany:

Biggest group of people to see a loss at home this week: South Carolina (vs Kentucky) 18,000.

Smallest group of people to see a win at home this week: McNeese State (vs New Orleans), 302.

Smallest Power Conference attendance: Oklahoma State (vs Kansas State), 4,407.

Average attendance this week: 4,816 (up 256 (5.6%) over last week)

And as always, your full attendance numbers for the week: