SJU's Home Court

[quote="hopeful" post=311939]How come there are no replays at Carnesecca? Can that be changed?[/quote]

I know this is not what you're going for here, but I'd like to see one thing change (and this is for all of college ball in general, not just SJU).

How come, whenever the refs go to the monitor. the fans don't see what the refs are seeing? Somebody watching at home knows exactly what's going on, but the people who paid to get in are clueless.

In baseball, whenever they go to the replay center, fans get to watch the play on the screen. It should be the same in college hoops, IMO.
 
Looks like the new AD is thinking big. Just wondering where the new Belmont arena fits in the scheme of things.
 
[quote="bamafan" post=312269]Might be a good idea to lower the price of a ticket a bit but don't know if Garden or we control pricing.[/quote]

We essentially rent the building. Break even is 10k and change at current pricing, so I doubt they'd lower prices.

Remains to be seen if we can draw that much at the garden for 2nd division big east teams, especially for late start midweek games unless season tickets sales surge
 
I am fine with 7 games like was first year of new big east. DePaul Wednesday at msg at 830 do not see drawing!

If can sell 5600 season tickets I’m fine with it.
 
[quote="Manhattan1" post=312373]I am fine with 7 games like was first year of new big east. DePaul Wednesday at msg at 830 do not see drawing!

If can sell 5600 season tickets I’m fine with it.[/quote]

I can check with athletic department but a few years ago we had about 2500 season ticket holders. Someone in the AD who knew a lot of members here by name who said they had season tickets discovered many in actuality did not. We are nowhere near 5600 season tickets at present. Guessing we are a lot closer to 3000 right now so hoping to fill msg at this point is pretty ambitious. If we dont sell at least 11 to 12k in season tix if we go to msg, then top schools w strong fan bases will neutralize any home court advantage. I think its premature to consider moving all games there at this point.
 
[quote="Manhattan1" post=312428]Does anyone know if he just meant an eventual goal or something in works for next year?[/quote]
My educated guess is eventually
 
[quote="Beast of the East" post=312421][quote="Manhattan1" post=312373]I am fine with 7 games like was first year of new big east. DePaul Wednesday at msg at 830 do not see drawing!

If can sell 5600 season tickets I’m fine with it.[/quote]

I can check with athletic department but a few years ago we had about 2500 season ticket holders. Someone in the AD who knew a lot of members here by name who said they had season tickets discovered many in actuality did not. We are nowhere near 5600 season tickets at present. Guessing we are a lot closer to 3000 right now so hoping to fill msg at this point is pretty ambitious. If we dont sell at least 11 to 12k in season tix if we go to msg, then top schools w strong fan bases will neutralize any home court advantage. I think its premature to consider moving all games there at this point.[/quote]

We used to have great season tickets. Then the school started jacking up the mandatory "donation" for the seats (in addition to the other SJU things we contribute to), on top of increased face value of each ticket. Wasn't worth it, so we picked and chose our games since then. After a win like today, we're leaning towards biting the bullet for seasons again.
 
Playing all big east games at MSG and expanding CA seems two decisions working against one another. Nine big east games, the Holiday Festival game and one big time opponent (Duke , Syr) leaves only a few games left against lesser opportents for CA.
Unless SJU has money to burn the plan to expand CA for the cupcake games seems illogical.
 
[quote="Enright" post=312616]Playing all big east games at MSG and expanding CA seems two decisions working against one another. Nine big east games, the Holiday Festival game and one big time opponent (Duke , Syr) leaves only a few games left against lesser opportents for CA.
Unless SJU has money to burn the plan to expand CA for the cupcake games seems illogical.[/quote]

AD is exploring all options. Doesn’t mean anything will change. Let’s see what happens in the end.
 
Prefer to play a big non-con matchup at MSG with the only BE guarantees being Nova and Gtown. Play all the Midwest schools at CA except for maybe DePaul because they won’t have any fans at MSG. I’d play Prov at MSG because they will bring some fans and are a traditional rival and I’d play the Hall at CA all the time because it will drive that program crazy and their is no fan base in the current BE that has more of a complex about St John’s than the Hall. Their board has multiple threads at a given time devoted to us.
 
I wouldn't mind one or two of what we expect to be lesser Big East games at the new arena at Belmont once it's finished. People love shiny new arenas, so I think it could be a draw even if we are playing a bottom-half team.
 
I think we need to let Cragg run with this. He wants to build this program into something significant and we’ve been running a mom and pop organization for too long. If he wants MSG, he has an idea how he will put the fans in the seats. Happy to see somebody taking big initiatives here. MSG us one of our biggest weapons. Helps us recruit, everybody wants to play there.
 
Last edited:
[quote="bamafan" post=312269]Might be a good idea to lower the price of a ticket a bit but don't know if Garden or we control pricing.[/quote]will go up
 
[quote="MarkRedman" post=312674]5,600 fans at CA is much more of a home court advantage than 5,600 fans at MSG[/quote]
Any near term plan to move 9 BE games to MSG will have to be accompanied by a plan to expand fan base.
 
I think Cragg may be premature in his enthusiasm based on what inarguably has been limited success this season. He very reasonably expressed that we need a great product, but this really isn't in my opinion, a chicken and egg thing. Having msg as a home court will negligiably improve the product - we've had a lot of seasons where we played the bulk of BE games at the garden with bad or mediocre teams and played competitive games against ranked competition in front of 7000 fans or less against teams without a huge local base, like WVU for example.

It's been many years since we had a large season ticket base, where we could fill Alumni Hall with nearly all season ticket holders. The dagger for our fan base was creating a large student section in the lower bleachers in a down season, moving long time season tix holders. Many canceled never to return.

Our fan base, even some of the most passionate posters here, are fickle. They will wait and see and come out in an exciting season, but stay home in bad seasons. I think the huge error here is committing to play so many games at the garden without a commensurate bump in season tix subscribers.

As many of you know I don't project about next season's roster the way many of you do. That's from a fan's perspective - I enjoy what's in front of me. However, from a business perspective, the program needs sustained excellence to commit to msg for ALL big east games. The garden with 18000 overwhelmingly st John's fans.is an awesome place to play, a garden party as Ricky Nelson sang. I remember . I was there. Many of you too.

However I also remember the name Grant's tomb assigned to shea stadium when donald grant cast off seaver, and the mets played in front of 10000 or less fans many nights. I remember not so long ago at the garden where a fan could shout across the court and be heard on the other side.

I'm confident in the resurgence mullin has created, more confident than just about everyone here, no one would doubt that. But I also know the value of a crazy on campus packed arena, say like Cameron. To me, perfection would be a great program with a 10 to 12000 on campus arena that we could fill with 3000-5000 students and a huge homecourt advantage.

For today at least, we should all be thrilled at the direction the program is heading, and without question where it is right now.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top