How did UB fare in regards to attendance compared to the rest of the MAC?
When it comes to basketball, attendance is highly variable in conferences outside of the P5, and the MAC is no exception. The Mid American Conference finished 12th in conference RPI last season, and overall attendance followed closely behind at 13th out of 32 Division I conferences.
Breaking it down by average attendance, we get the following figures:
EMU | 858 |
Miami | 1113 |
NIU | 1251 |
BGSU | 2028 |
WMU | 2643 |
CMU | 2709 |
Ball St | 2806 |
Kent | 3154 |
Akron | 3214 |
UB | 3639 |
UT | 5029 |
OU | 6681 |
So, some simple take-aways:
1) Eastern Michigan needs some help. There can't be all that much to do in Ypsi on a Tuesday in January, right? Not that the past needs to be resurrected, but if you haven't read about their CIT campus round and attendance issues, I suggest you give it a glance.
2) Ohio runs away with the highest attendance. It obviously helps to have the 13,080 seat Convocation Center, however they still averaged above UB's most highly attended game (Bowling Green with 6607). Despite Saul Ball finishing the year at 10-20, they still led by a significant amount.
So where does that leave UB?
*The Wheeling Jesuit exhibition and Canisius at FNC have been omitted
The two glaring outliers are obviously the "color-out" games, Kent State and Bowling Green. This also shows the significance of student attendance. For the Kent State 10:00pm black-out, nearly half of the attendance came from students. It wasn't even until three games into MAC play that students were even back on campus.. Darn you Winter Session.
The Out of Conference schedule was a little more variable, however the MAC games besides BGSU and Kent stabilized in the mid 3000's.
If you have any other take-aways, please share!
Looking forward to next season, do you think that UB attendance will increase, decrease, or remain the same?