Hoping to make it up on Saturday if we can take care of business in the quarters!
I feel like you are not alone in that thought process and thus attendance will be really interesting this year! Minneapolis will provide a unique environment.
- If Illinois is ever TRULY rolling, we have a significant home court advantage at the United Center. It was a 85%+ orange crowd vs. PSU last year in a disappointing season, and in years like 2005 we have had the place looking no different than SFC. However, if we suck or get knocked out early, schools like MSU, Indiana, Purdue, Iowa, etc. can help to carry attendance.
- Same story with Indiana and to a lesser extent Purdue in Indianapolis. They obviously have a home court advantage, but I have seen games there where the significant majority of the crowd was Illini fans, and you have schools like the Michigan schools and OSU that also bring good crowds.
- I imagine if Rutgers were ever Big Ten champs, they would bring out a large contingent at Madison Square Garden. However, you have multiple schools like Penn State (although their basketball fan base is pretty weak), Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, etc. with large alumni bases in the NYC area, and Maryland is not that far away.
However, I really feel like Minneapolis' "base" attendance REALLY relies on the Gophers and the Badgers. If you leave the BTT seed calculator alone with the default results, these are the teams on each day:
Wednesday: Indiana, Michigan, Maryland, Rutgers. IU fans traditionally "travel well," but Minneapolis is quite far away, and the Hoosiers suck this year. I have to imagine attendance for these first two games would be pretty awful.
Thursday: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan State, Penn State. You have the three teams most likely to bring a large contingent all possibly losing on the Thursday - Minnesota playing a surging OSU team, Wisconsin in a bit of a free fall and Iowa playing PSU. If all three teams lost, I think you would see ticket prices plummet a bit for Friday, and a lot of Purdue and Illini fans would snag them up, with some waiting to see if their team made it to Saturday before pulling the trigger.