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I don't think I've ever been to an SMU men's B-Ball game that had so few attendees as Saturday night. Seemed like about 150 were there, counting band, cheerleaders, players, refs, media.

Earlier on Saturday, I received a phone call from a Mustang Club rep seeking pledge renewal. The person had no clue that there was any SMU basketball games on campus at all over the weekend. I had to fill him in on everything.

The marketing department appears to be falling down on the job when it comes to basketball. Are the students out for Thanksgiving already? Their attendance continues to be an embarrassment. Hopefully the "marketing department" will get off their butts and start earning their money. Not a good job market to become "suddenly" unemployed!

Really sad.

With a nucleus of McCoy, Otis & Papa the fans have something to be really excited about. The additions of Williams & Faye give us something we haven't had in a while.

I was very excited to see how aggressive the team is & how they hustled

Hopefully the W's will continue & folks will start coming to the games @ one of the best college basketball arena's in the country. It is really a great place to watch a game. Even half full ,it can rock !

2300 reported attendance. Probably around 1200. No worse than many of the early games last year against no name teams. Student attendance dropped considerably from Friday night to Saturday. Probably worse tonight.

The Marketing department at SMU has never been good. Clearly they spend all of their time and resources Marketing football. Didn't SMU hire an external advertising/marketing agency to assist? Regardless - I agree - that department needs to bust it for the othe programs like they do football.

I think we need to cut a bit of slack here. First of all, the home opener was the night before, it is hard for many people/families to make it to back to back games. They needed to choose between Friday or Saturday and chose Friday because it was the opener.

TT and OU were on TV, even though it ended up being a cruddy game, the allure for many a sports fan not to miss this was strong, I had even considered skipping the game Saturday to watch this, and I have not missed a home game in years, so its understandable that more than a few SMU fans did, and I forgive them.

High School Playoffs, lot of big games for area teams on Saturday, including Plano, I know 2 families that usually come to SMU games but had to go to the Plano game instead.

If the team can start winning and playing some exciting basketball, the crowds will come back.

mustangbill67 wrote:2300 reported attendance. Probably around 1200. No worse than many of the early games last year against no name teams. Student attendance dropped considerably from Friday night to Saturday. Probably worse tonight.

The reason that student attendance was down was because many of the fans there Friday night were at fraternity/sorority formals. do not fear pony fans, there will be a lot of students at the game tonight.

bagice wrote:I think we need to cut a bit of slack here. First of all, the home opener was the night before, it is hard for many people/families to make it to back to back games. They needed to choose between Friday or Saturday and chose Friday because it was the opener.

TT and OU were on TV, even though it ended up being a cruddy game, the allure for many a sports fan not to miss this was strong, I had even considered skipping the game Saturday to watch this, and I have not missed a home game in years, so its understandable that more than a few SMU fans did, and I forgive them.

High School Playoffs, lot of big games for area teams on Saturday, including Plano, I know 2 families that usually come to SMU games but had to go to the Plano game instead.

If the team can start winning and playing some exciting basketball, the crowds will come back.

Excuses are fun! Another example of what's wrong with our fan base.

The game presentation is horrendous. It's very tense during every play stoppage as you can hear crickets while the band director, music guy and announcer have no idea what's going on. It wasn't this bad when I was in school during the Sasser years.

Harry0569 wrote:

mustangbill67 wrote:2300 reported attendance. Probably around 1200. No worse than many of the early games last year against no name teams. Student attendance dropped considerably from Friday night to Saturday. Probably worse tonight.

The reason that student attendance was down was because many of the fans there Friday night were at fraternity/sorority formals. do not fear pony fans, there will be a lot of students at the game tonight.

I certainly hope so...no "big event" conflict and this game is very important for our program. Good opportunity to see if the students are going to support this team this year...and will be interesting to see how the guys respond if there actually was a loud home crowd in Moody.

Harry0569 wrote:

mustangbill67 wrote:2300 reported attendance. Probably around 1200. No worse than many of the early games last year against no name teams. Student attendance dropped considerably from Friday night to Saturday. Probably worse tonight.

The reason that student attendance was down was because many of the fans there Friday night were at fraternity/sorority formals. do not fear pony fans, there will be a lot of students at the game tonight.

Did they come dressed as empty bleachers? No more than 75 students at the game last night..................

It must be a very strange feeling for the players when they take the court to these types of crowds. Illinois State drew over 100 k fans last season.

Most of these kids from other teams probably see this many fans or more when they are having their shoot around 1 hr before the game.

Its got to be really depressing for our kids.

I have always loved the tournament atmosphere. I love the 3 games in 3 days. But I'm afraid with this type of turnout our squad is going to be on the road for future tournaments. (I realize the only tournament that matters is in March).

Right - lets give these guys another excuse