At the suggestion of one of our readers, we’d like to give you a chance to sound off on our current poll question. If you haven’t checked the results, the response has been one-sided to this point: 88% of you believe there should be a change to student seating in Assembly Hall. If you are a part of the camp that voted yes, what is your plan to reorganize student seating? If you voted no, tell us why the majority got it wrong.

(Photo credit: ESPN.com)

I’ve already said my piece on attendance at Assembly Hall this year, but since then and the addition of the $5 tickets in the balcony, attendance hasn’t been too shabby. If you make it cheaper, they will come. Sunday against the Illini, IU is going for a stripe out, having certain sections wear red, and others wear white. This is an idea I’ve heard proposed among students for a while now; I’m glad someone in the athletic department decided to actually follow through on it. Should be cool to see in action. (Correction: IU did a stripe out last year for the Michigan State game. Thanks commenter BornRed.)

According to Pat Forde (a one-time interview subject here at ITH), Assembly Hall is near sold out for the stripe out and compared to at least one team that’s been successful this year, we’re outdrawing them.

The first was the sight of Indiana (2) players and coaches engaging in a virtual group hug with the crowd of 14,247 in Assembly Hall after (finally) winning a Big Ten game last week against Iowa. The second was the news that Arizona State (3) is hoping to draw more than 11,000 fans for the first time this season when UCLA comes to Tempe on Thursday.

You read that right. The Hoosiers are 6-16, enduring what might be the worst season in school history — and easily outdrawing the 18th-ranked, 18-5 Sun Devils.

This is what’s known as the difference between a basketball school and a non-basketball school.

At Indiana, the winning percentage is .273 this season, but the gym is full to 79.8 percent capacity (average attendance is 13,933). The fans are overachieving.

At Arizona State, the winning percentage is .783, but 14,198-seat Wells Fargo Arena has been only 58.2 percent full. The fans are missing out on a good show from coach Herb Sendek, James Harden & Co.

Well, that’s sure comforting. In a year where the product on the court has been pretty brutal, our fans are still showing up in bigger numbers than a ranked program at the moment.

Small victories. I’ll take it.

It’s no secret that attendance INSIDE THE HALL this season has not been very good, at least in terms of what we’ve come to expect. We’ve come to expect sellouts or near sellouts, so when that doesn’t happen, it becomes a topic of conversation.

In some of the earlier live chats this season, we were curious: “Are there even any fans in the balcony?” “How many students are there?” The results were bleak. As Chris Korman wrote back in November, student ticket sales were down about 4,000 this year. This math seems to match up with attendance. In games when classes are in session, IU is averaging somewhere in the 13,000 range for number of attendees. Capacity at Assembly Hall is 17,456. (17,456 – 4,000 = somewhere in the 13,000s.)*

*Quickly: I believe last year, because of the demand for tickets, not all students that bought packages got tickets for every single game. So the numbers could be off here, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll just go with it.

It seems one member of the Rumors and Rants crew has taken the latter part of their name, and ranted like mad about students not showing up to these games. (I counted six f-bombs in this thing, as well as six exclamation points. This rant is not for the faint of heart; tread lightly.)

Anyways, for fun, I’m going to blockquote the rant, and then I’m going to give my own commentary under the blockquote. This is a technique no blogger has ever used. Ever.

Here we go:

Well, today on his local radio show (I only ever hear the teasers because I have a day job) Dan Dakich discussed how fans of IU basketball, especially students, are staying away in droves from Assembly Hall this season.

My reaction: You’re full of s–t, Dan Dakich! I don’t believe it. There’s simply no way. You’re just a loser who couldn’t win games with Eric Gordon and DJ White and a supporting cast higher than Snoop Dogg!

And yet, after a little non-scientific investigation, turns out he’s right. IU fans are avoiding 1001 East 17th Street in Bloomington, Indiana like it’s infected with the Ebola virus.

(more…)

One of the story lines that I’ll be watching closely is the 17-game home court winning streak that the Hoosiers will take into the 2007-2008 campaign.

My interest in this statistic was piqued by my co-worker, who is a huge Kentucky fan. In his defense, he’s the only tolerable UK fan I’ve ever encountered. I know, that’s a shocking revelation, but for those of you who are forced to deal with obnoxious fans of other programs, there’s hope for you yet.

We like to talk hoops frequently and he’s convinced that UK is going to come into Assembly Hall with a new coach, a mediocre front line led by a freshman and walk away with a victory. My initial reaction was to tell him that we don’t lose home games. Then to back up my claim and out of curiosity, I looked deeper into the numbers and found that our current streak ranks 10th in the nation.

Among the notable streaks ahead of IU are Memphis at 32, Ohio St. at 25, Wisconsin at 22, Notre Dame and UCLA at 20 and Florida at 19.

One of the many things that really irked me about the Mike Davis era is the amount of games that were lost at home. Programs with a home court advantage like IU has at Assembly Hall just shouldn’t lose home games. Anyway you slice it, losing at home is not acceptable.

That’s one of the encouraging things about last season and the direction of the program under Coach Sampson. IU was 15-0 at home last season and most of the games weren’t close. I’m expecting similar results moving forward and especially on December 8. After all, nothing will be sweeter than a 3-hour ride home for the Wildcats with their tails tucked between their legs.

Over at Sports Illustrated today, Luke Winn threw down an interview he conducted with Michigan State’s Drew Neitzel. (I swear DN should have graduated two years ago. Seems like he’s been there forever.)

Within it, Neitzel talks about playing on the road in the Big Ten, namely at Assembly Hall:

It’s a tough conference to play on the road. Every place is unique, and sometimes it depends on what kind of a year a team is having. Illinois is tough. Indiana might be No. 1, though. It’s not just their student section; it’s their whole fan base. They love basketball. The arena [Assembly Hall] is huge. It’s like a theater — it goes up really high on both sides, and the sound seems to echo in there. It feels like the fans are right on top of you, and they get pretty loud.

I haven’t been to a lot of other Big Ten arenas, (only Illinois’ Assembly Hall and Northwestern’s um, high school gym) but I’d have to say Drew’s right: the other Assembly Hall is right up there with IU’s. With the Orange Krush student section literally on the court, the atmosphere can get rather raucous in there. I’d actually give the edge to the Illini on a few different facets, (namely student section and crowd continuity) but IU has more seats which should equate to more sound, no?

Let’s just call this a draw. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Illinois and Indiana fanbases, it’s that they like to agree, right?