For those few who care

[OldPony]

Hawaii wins. Less than a 1000 at the game. Maybe SMU should just give up sports. None but the few on this board care. Thursday night confreence game. How pyiyful is that. The Ponies might as well play on the road all of the time. We have ZERO home court advantage.

[lbloomiii]

What happened at the end of the game? Why did it take so long to foul?

[Charleston Pony]

any wonder why our guys play "uninspired" at times? Looks like Bhop had a solid game tonight. At least most of these guys will return next year. I still think this group (Simpson, Castro & Isham) does something special before they finish. They did get our 1st win against a top 25 program in years and who knows...the season is young. How about SMU being that 16-15 team that makes the dance this year? These guys have shown they can play. I'm still waiting for them to do so for 40 minutes.


The bench contributed 36 minutes tonight and went 0-6 shooting, but did pull down 9 boards with Pearson getting 6 boards in only 10 minutes. We need more than 5 guys scoring if we are going to be a factor in this league.

<small>[ 01-15-2004, 06:30 PM: Message edited by: Charleston Pony ]</small>

[Hoop Fan]

OP, it wasn't pretty, but where do you get your facts man? The student section was completely chalk full and there were many more around the arena. Yes, lots of no shows and nothing to be proud of. BHop was the only guy who had anything tonight. Without him, I think we lose by 25. The last sequence of the game was inexcusable.

[Cheesesteak]

Posted by OldPony:

"Less than a 1000 at the game...
Thursday night confreence game."

Triple digit attendance just doesn't make sense.

This SMU team is competitive and could on a good night defeat any team (Wake Forest?) on its schedule.

There are six D1-A basketball teams (Saint Joseph's, Temple, Drexel, La Salle, Pennsylvania and Villanova) within 14 miles of Philadelphia's City Hall. Only Villanova is located more than 7 miles from City Hall.

Villanova and Saint Joe's games are sold-out before a season starts. Temple sells out high-profile games in its 10,200 seat arena and attracts 5,000 fans for an uninteresting opponet.

Drexel, La Salle and Pennsylvania (9,000 seat arena) enjoy 1-2 sell-outs each season and attract at least 2-3 thousand fans for any opponent.

Home 76ers (basketball) and Flyers (hockey) games have no impact on college basketball attendance in the Philly area.

SMU has almost no collegiate competition for basketball fans in Dallas.

A combination of a few students, a few alumni, some casual SMU fans, some friends enjoying cheap weeknight entertainment, etc. in a multi-million person metropolitan area should by default put a thousand bodies in Moody Coliseum.

It doesn't make sense.

[Hoop Fan]

Part of that is the good crowds probably are when those Philly schools play each other. Its passion, rivalries and sometimes just hatred. Thats what we completely lack in the WAC. I mean, I find it hard to dislike Hawaii or even care very much. Two years ago they had that very good and tough SOB, Savovic, so I could muster some venom but tonight there was no hint of rivalry or anything. That is a problem.

<small>[ 01-15-2004, 08:03 PM: Message edited by: Hoop Fan ]</small>

[Diehard Pony]

Not that it makes any difference, but the official attendance was 2,743. Actual butts in seats were probably about 1.5k+. With that said, please see the other posts re attendance not being the core problem.

<small>[ 01-15-2004, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: Diehard Pony ]</small>

[Cheesesteak]

Originally posted by Hoop Fan:

"Part of that is the good crowds probably are when those Philly schools play each other. Its passion, rivalries and sometimes just hatred."

True...Drexel, La Salle and Pennsylvania can attribute most of their home sell-outs to "city series" games.

Saint Joseph's, Temple and Villanova don't need "city series" games to sell-out their arenas. La Salle, located in a "bad" neighborhood with totally insufficient parking recently had the following home crowds:

Richmond (VA)
(last place team in A-10 conference) - 2782

Seton Hall (NJ)
(non-conference) - 3248

La Salle and Drexel have the lowest average home attendance per season of the "Philly Schools" and still attract plenty more fans than SMU.

SMU basketball has many advantages over these schools...It doesn't make sense.

[EastStang]

DC is known as a basketball hotbed, yet, Navy and American played last week (two local teams)and had the same size crowd as the SMU/Navy game 1,523. Maryland sells out against most ACC teams, in their 20,000 seat arena. Georgetown gets about 10,000 for Big East games at the MCI Center (usually sells out for ND and Syracuse), but around 2000-3000 for non-conference at McDonough. GW has small crowds 1,853 against St. Joseph's this week and St. Joe's is a good team. Part of it is urban distraction. As long as the students show, that is a big part because that gives the team the passion and the "6th man". If the students don't show, it makes for a tough game for the players. That's why I don't think we need to expand the arena. The smaller the better. VMI used to be unbeatable at home until they got a new arena.

[Waz]

Eaststang, you were at the Navy-SMU game weren't you? Would you honestly go and watch Navy play anyone. They are really really really bad.

[Johnny Rock]

The reason that no one goes to the games is very simple. People are tired of SMU'S lack of commitment to athletics. Dement's tenure at SMU is long overdue. Until a high profile coach is hired and SMU allows the coaches to fully compete, people will continue to stay away from SMU basketball and other sporting events for that matter. It is that simple. If SMU does not want to make the necessary changes then that is fine... just drop down to Division 2 or Division 1-AA and place less of an emphasis on athletics.

[Cheesesteak]

Posted by Johnny Rock:

"The reason that no one goes to the games is very simple. People are tired of SMU'S lack of commitment to athletics...Until a high profile coach is hired and SMU allows the coaches to fully compete, people will continue to stay away from SMU basketball and other sporting events for that matter...

JR - you don't make sense.

SMU's basketball team has talent and can compete with/defeat any team (Wake Forest?) on its schedule.

Coach Dement recruited these players. His ability to develop and motivate them has been questioned and that seems fair.

JR - How is SMU not committed to basketball ("athletics")?

JR - Most schools (even those with very successful basketball programs) do not/can not hire a "high-profile" coach, so why does SMU need one even if Coach Dement departed?

JR - How is SMU currently not allowing the basketball coaches to "fully compete"?

SMU's 2003/2004 basketball team is usually competitive (had a winning record until losing to Hawaii) and Moody Coliseum is a pleasant venue to watch a game in and SMU provides a safe campus to visit with adequate parking and most tickets are very reasonably priced and SMU's athletes don't act like hoodlums as occurs on some campuses so SMU should not have such severe attendance problems...I believe that the majority of actual and potential SMU fans have no understanding or awareness about SMU's committment to anything...they just aren't motivated to come to SMU games.

[Stallion]

GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR A.. You don't know how Dement is disadvantaged?-this the Nite after playing a team with 10 JUCOs and International semi-pros. You go directly into the ignorant category defined as those that don't know the first thing about what they are talking about.

[OldPony]

Hoop Fan- Since we couldn't get the game on 660 last night, I went to the Hawaii broadcast. The announcers remarked how poor the crowd was. One said something like there are only 1500 people here and the other guy took exception. They then agreed that there was not even 1000. They also said SMU has real problems if they can't get a bigger crowd than that for a decent team playing a decent team. They also made the statement that the few who were there and the Mustang band were vociferous and lively. Throughoput the first half they continually made reference to the fact that Hawaii had out hustled SMU and that was why the Bows were leading.
They were almost sad the way they described the lack of support for the Mustangs.

[DiamondM]

First, there were probably 1500 there, whatever the underestimating Hawaii broadcasters said. The student section was actually full -- not packed, but full. We've had worse showings.

Second, Stallion can keep harping on the juco thing, but this was not the usual Hawaii team packed with lots of skilled Euros and jucos. Talent wise, this was definitely a team we should have beaten. SMU came out in the first half flat, flat, flat. Hawaii was getting every loose ball. It looked like our guys were just one step too late in going after rebounds. Plus they couldn't generate any offense because they weren't moving without the ball. And that continued pretty much until the last 6 minutes, when the guys (and the crowd) finally showed some life.

Third, I am usually loathe to blame the coach, and Dement certainly isn't the only responsible guy, but I do get the feeling that for whatever reason he is simply unable to motivate this team to play 40 minutes of their best basketball with their best effort. Plus the management of the end of the game was atrocious. Again, not solely Dement's fault, but even after we idiotically failed to foul in a reasonable amount of time, you KNEW that Sensley was going to miss the front end of the 1 and 1 with 1.9 seconds left to make it more difficult to get a rebound and get a reasonable shot off. So what do we do? We call our LAST timeout BEFORE he takes the shot. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Look, I like Dement, and I think he's a pretty good coach. But I think SMU's program is stagnant, and has reached a plateau that they can't get off of. Problem is who are we going to get right now that's better than Dement? For all you saying "SMU isn't committed" because it won't go out and get a "name" coach, aside from the fact that it is silly to go get some washed up coach fired from a "good" coaching job just because he has a "name" (Knight, Calipari, and Pitino were unusual situations), what "name" is available that we could get? Very few college basketball people have a "name" that would generate much Dallas interest anyway. We don't need someone with a name. If we are going to make a change at all, we need someone who has proven ability to recruit in Dallas, has a good reputation in the community, has a good basketball mind, and can motivate these players now. Only person I can think of that may fit that bill is Jimmy Tubbs. But I'm sure to JR, hiring someone like that would just demonstrate SMU's "lack of commitment" because he's never heard of him.