DePaul Attendance

[NYCRedmen]

Box score says 4949 in the house last night. I was hoping for a better crowd but I guess the late start & threat of rain kept people away. Considering we were on a winning streak & sole possession of 3rd place was on the line, I thought we'd have more of a turn out. Now I have to see if I can swing another road trip to DC like last year, anyone going?

 

[Class of 72]

Box score says 4949 in the house last night. I was hoping for a better crowd but I guess the late start & threat of rain kept people away. Considering we were on a winning streak & sole possession of 3rd place was on the line, I thought we'd have more of a turn out. Now I have to see if I can swing another road trip to DC like last year, anyone going?

That number had to be the number of tickets "sold" not fans in seats! Many "no-shows" throughout the arena.....especially in the choice seats.

 

[beast of the east]

The upper reaches of CA were pretty empty as well. I would guess actual attendance at 3500

 

[Moose]

I counted 4947

 

[TX Redman]

At one stage the TV cameras showed Jayson Williams and Charles Oakley sitting together. Charles was hogging the popcorn and Jayson was trying to point out something in the rafters... Charles pretended he knew what Jayson was going on about and then went back to the popcorn.

 

[beast of the east]

At one stage the TV cameras showed Jayson Williams and Charles Oakley sitting together. Charles was hogging the popcorn and Jayson was trying to point out something in the rafters... Charles pretended he knew what Jayson was going on about and then went back to the popcorn.

Terrence Mullin was in the row behind me. I climb into that row to hit the men's room, and passed him twice and didn't realize it was him until later in the game. Lots of former players turning out to watch this squad - very nice to see.

 

[spilke]

the attendance # might be low......but i thought the arena was very loud and vocal, especially once harrison fouled out of the game....

 

[LINY89]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

 

[beast of the east]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

 

[SJU65]

A full house in "Alumni Hall" was 6009 and that was the number that was there, game in and game out. This generation doesn't know what a full house is. And we'd get 19000 many tiimes at the Garden. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

 

[beast of the east]

A full house in "Alumni Hall" was 6009 and that was the number that was there, game in and game out. This generation doesn't know what a full house is. And we'd get 19000 many tiimes at the Garden. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

Overall, from anecdotal observation only, our fans have gotten so much bigger thatthe same 6000 people would fit into the same space.

 

[Section3]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

Beast....was telling my buddy last night that I remember Alumni Hall routinely being SRO and thinking the same thing re: student tix...also remember Alumni Hall having a reputation for being a tough place for an oppoennt to win..some of last night's calls/non-calls would never have happened back in the day

 

[salty dog]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

Absolutely correct. NY is for winners. Every average Joe will become a Johnny fan when they are ranked number one. You can bet on it and tickets will be impossible to buy.

 

[LINY89]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

Absolutely correct. NY is for winners. Every average Joe will become a Johnny fan when they are ranked number one. You can bet on it and tickets will be impossible to buy.

Totally agreed. You may get hated more in NY for losing than anywhere else, but you also won't get loved more anywhere else if you win big. I don't even think it would take being ranked #1 to create a frenzy...all we have to do is be a top 25 team and start making the tourney somewhat consistently. In 2011 we were on PTI with people wondering if we could be a final four threat...that's when we were ranked #18...imagine if we were a top 10 team? The empire state building would be red and trust me, not for Rutgers in Jersey.

 

[LINY89]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

As I've said before, St. John's to someone who lived through the 80's especially as a SJ student is a totally different brand to current students and recent fans. Look at the Islanders...they won 4 straight cups in the 80's...unheard of success. They were the Yankees of the NHL for half a decade. Now if you were born in the late 80's-early 90's, you would have people laughing at you for wearing an Isles shirt because of how bad they were. Two totally different realities, yet same team. Now go to SJ...1980's...MAJOR success including final four appearances and a #1 ranking. To someone alive at that time, SJ was the team to beat...the toast of the town, and I think the team was even featured in a movie playing Georgetown or something. Now fast forward to current times...1 NCAA appearance in the past decade losing in the first round. That's what we have to show for TEN years. To someone born in the late 80's-early 90's, SJ is a team that had its day like the Mets and Isles, but has now sucked for a long time. You have golden-era attendance standards for a team coming off a 13-19 year and 1 tourney berth since many undergrads at the school were 10 years old. Comparing attendance figures from when we were #1 on the same levels as Duke, Cuse, etc. to attendance figures when we have been a Big East doormat for a long time is apples and oranges. You don't see Islanders fans genuinely surprised that fans aren't going to games do you? Of course not, because they have been awful for so long and the golden era for them was long ago. A team's success means next to nothing to students if it occurred before they were born or too young to understand. The team needs only one thing to get butts in seats: consistent winning.

 

[STJ11Redmen]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

I wasn't around in the days you're talking about when students couldn't get tickets but is it possible that students not being able to buy tickets back then decimated the ticket-buying student fanbase that would currently be middle-aged alums (which should be our prime season ticket holder audience) and is why most fans you see at the games are either ancient or current students?

 

[beast of the east]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

I wasn't around in the days you're talking about when students couldn't get tickets but is it possible that students not being able to buy tickets back then decimated the ticket-buying student fanbase that would currently be middle-aged alums (which should be our prime season ticket holder audience) and is why most fans you see at the games are either ancient or current students?

I believe that its absolutely correct that students who couldn't buy tickets to an SRO Alumni Hall never became fans of the program after graduation. Some of my best memories as a student was to be at a game with 30-50 friends in the same section. Road trips became small caravans, whether to Philly, Georgetown, Providence, BC, or shorter midweek trips to Rutgers or West Point.

Even at the height of our success, like the Final Four season, there wasn't this incredible buzz on campus about the team, because by and large students weren't engaged. In St. Albert's Hall, home of the pharmacy school, allied health professions, and science students, you'd hardly know there was a team.

The school only woke up to the need for a student section after the program was in decline. Unfortunately, the school wiped out a major number of season ticket holders by making the entire lower bleachers across from the baskets a student section and moved all long time season ticket holders upstairs. Most dropped their tickets and have not returned. As the school learned, students don't show up unless the team wins. So the joke was that they destroyed a huge part of their loyal season ticket base (people who bought tickets every season habitually) to create an empty student section. They completed the dismantling of the base by going to the point system, again during a down era, and relocating loyal alumni in the lower bleachers on the side of the team benches.

The seat back chairs now owned by bigger donors, remain unoccupied even for good games. I suspect many big donors also have big job responsbilities that keep them away from games.

An inequity rarely discussed is how the poitn system has been perverted by groups of season ticket holders consolidaitng the order by aggregating the total points of 6-10 alumni and ordering the seats as a package. As a small group with a lot of points, they get better seats without having to make substantial donations. The school should tweak this, and come up with a point value per seat, which would eliminate this.

 

[LINY89]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

I wasn't around in the days you're talking about when students couldn't get tickets but is it possible that students not being able to buy tickets back then decimated the ticket-buying student fanbase that would currently be middle-aged alums (which should be our prime season ticket holder audience) and is why most fans you see at the games are either ancient or current students?

I believe that its absolutely correct that students who couldn't buy tickets to an SRO Alumni Hall never became fans of the program after graduation. Some of my best memories as a student was to be at a game with 30-50 friends in the same section. Road trips became small caravans, whether to Philly, Georgetown, Providence, BC, or shorter midweek trips to Rutgers or West Point.

Even at the height of our success, like the Final Four season, there wasn't this incredible buzz on campus about the team, because by and large students weren't engaged. In St. Albert's Hall, home of the pharmacy school, allied health professions, and science students, you'd hardly know there was a team.

The school only woke up to the need for a student section after the program was in decline. Unfortunately, the school wiped out a major number of season ticket holders by making the entire lower bleachers across from the baskets a student section and moved all long time season ticket holders upstairs. Most dropped their tickets and have not returned. As the school learned, students don't show up unless the team wins. So the joke was that they destroyed a huge part of their loyal season ticket base (people who bought tickets every season habitually) to create an empty student section. They completed the dismantling of the base by going to the point system, again during a down era, and relocating loyal alumni in the lower bleachers on the side of the team benches.

The seat back chairs now owned by bigger donors, remain unoccupied even for good games. I suspect many big donors also have big job responsbilities that keep them away from games.

An inequity rarely discussed is how the poitn system has been perverted by groups of season ticket holders consolidaitng the order by aggregating the total points of 6-10 alumni and ordering the seats as a package. As a small group with a lot of points, they get better seats without having to make substantial donations. The school should tweak this, and come up with a point value per seat, which would eliminate this.

Actually, it's just the opposite. Students are now being kicked out of the "student section". Behind each basket is now only for season ticket holders as general admission. I was turned away at one end, tried the other and got the same response. This really confused me because I was able to sit in the student section before with no problems. Also, they only gave towels out to the fans in those 2 sections, not to the first 500 fans as was advertised. SJ completely botches promotions, advertising, seating, etc. I already wrote a nasty letter to one of the head guys dealing with ticket sales how I (a student) was basically forced to sit high up in the middle section of the court instead of in the student section. The whole place should be rebuilt, because they aren't real sections anyway...they hold like 30 people comfortably. My student section was quadruple the size undergrad at a school with only 5,000 students and I never got turned away to general admission areas. They really need to get these kinks taken care of.

 

[STJ11Redmen]

Thanks Beast, I just recently graduated and always wondered why over the last 5 years that the fan base was generally so old for a team that had the majority of its success in the 1980's but that makes sense. Hopefully we can reverse the trend with some winning seasons in the coming years which in turn leads to more people buying tickets after graduating.

 

[STJ11Redmen]

If you were unhappy with the crowd last night, your expectations are too high. First of all CA is not a nice arena at all. Second of all it was against DePaul. Besides those facts, the place still looked 90% packed. Of course no one sits all the way at the top, because you are literally staring at beams in the ceiling. The crowd was great.

Hard for you to believe, but for years on end we nearly sold the entire arena out on season tickets. I recall sitting in my seats in a sold out alumni hall before we even had a student section wondering if they were losing future fans since students couldn't get into the place without buying a season ticket.

All the way at the top in a place that seats less than 6,000? You really have to be kidding. Try watching a game from the cheap seats in the Carrier Dome when there are 30,000 in attendance and see how tiny the players from the upper reaches. You can make all the excuses you want, but when your school plays in one of the top three conferences in the US, has a winning streak, and a winning record, and you can't draw 5,000 for an in conference opponent, something is wrong.

There are far worse places to play than CA. I just read a very fine book by Kriegel on Pistol Pete Maravich. The gym at LSU was a horrible dump, but given a reason to come out (Maravich) even very deep in football country at a school that never drew for basketball, people mobbed the place. He was so heralded asa freshman, the freshman game would be packed and people would leave before the varsity game.

The problem with most dumb fans is, well, they are dumb. As soon as we break the top twenty five or top 15, beat some ranked opponents, then all of a sudden fans will flock to the games. Most fans can only tell great basketball by the team's record, and will ignore the ascent from fair to mediocre to good to great. They will only show up for a great, and then proclaim their forever undying allegiance.

Students will find the money for travel, expensive food and drink, and tickets. Workers in NYC will suddenly plan their day around a St John's game again, stay in the city after work to fill the Garden. All of this nonsensical talk about bleachers, crappy arenas, cost of travel, etc. will all go away. Right now, even if we had a Staples Center on campus, we wouldn't draw many more fans for SJU-DePAul than we did last night.

I wasn't around in the days you're talking about when students couldn't get tickets but is it possible that students not being able to buy tickets back then decimated the ticket-buying student fanbase that would currently be middle-aged alums (which should be our prime season ticket holder audience) and is why most fans you see at the games are either ancient or current students?

I believe that its absolutely correct that students who couldn't buy tickets to an SRO Alumni Hall never became fans of the program after graduation. Some of my best memories as a student was to be at a game with 30-50 friends in the same section. Road trips became small caravans, whether to Philly, Georgetown, Providence, BC, or shorter midweek trips to Rutgers or West Point.

Even at the height of our success, like the Final Four season, there wasn't this incredible buzz on campus about the team, because by and large students weren't engaged. In St. Albert's Hall, home of the pharmacy school, allied health professions, and science students, you'd hardly know there was a team.

The school only woke up to the need for a student section after the program was in decline. Unfortunately, the school wiped out a major number of season ticket holders by making the entire lower bleachers across from the baskets a student section and moved all long time season ticket holders upstairs. Most dropped their tickets and have not returned. As the school learned, students don't show up unless the team wins. So the joke was that they destroyed a huge part of their loyal season ticket base (people who bought tickets every season habitually) to create an empty student section. They completed the dismantling of the base by going to the point system, again during a down era, and relocating loyal alumni in the lower bleachers on the side of the team benches.

The seat back chairs now owned by bigger donors, remain unoccupied even for good games. I suspect many big donors also have big job responsbilities that keep them away from games.

An inequity rarely discussed is how the poitn system has been perverted by groups of season ticket holders consolidaitng the order by aggregating the total points of 6-10 alumni and ordering the seats as a package. As a small group with a lot of points, they get better seats without having to make substantial donations. The school should tweak this, and come up with a point value per seat, which would eliminate this.

Actually, it's just the opposite. Students are now being kicked out of the "student section". Behind each basket is now only for season ticket holders as general admission. I was turned away at one end, tried the other and got the same response. This really confused me because I was able to sit in the student section before with no problems. Also, they only gave towels out to the fans in those 2 sections, not to the first 500 fans as was advertised. SJ completely botches promotions, advertising, seating, etc. I already wrote a nasty letter to one of the head guys dealing with ticket sales how I (a student) was basically forced to sit high up in the middle section of the court instead of in the student section. The whole place should be rebuilt, because they aren't real sections anyway...they hold like 30 people comfortably. My student section was quadruple the size undergrad at a school with only 5,000 students and I never got turned away to general admission areas. They really need to get these kinks taken care of.

You got turned away because students paid 100 bucks in advance to have the right to priority student seating. It wouldn't be fair to someone who paid 100 to be turned away because of some fair-weather fan who walked the the window and paid 5 bucks the day of the game.