I read, "For the first time since since 1983 attendance is below 13000. This is despite what historically are the least attended games not even counting towards that (November games vs awful teams)
My response was about the first time since 1983, which is now. The quality of teams we have played against this November is what I posted about.
Nice twisting of words in the post although we are talking about Groce being fired or not, this year not last year. Groce scheduled talented teams in November, just saying.
We're talking about attendance at home games.
Now that we are back on the attendance topic, I want to have some "fun" with numbers. I firmly believe this is the worst year ever for Illinois basketball attendance, and it isn't even close.
So far we are averaging 12,900 people at our home games (not counting the Springfield games here). People at the games are saying the attendance has been reported much higher than the amount of people there. I'm not going to address that in this post, but feel free to take that as you will.
There seems to be 2 sources for historical attendance records. The NCAAs numbers seem to differ than our own archives. The NCAA's seem a little incomplete so well go with our own.
Let's set some things straight. Illinois historically has had amazing attendance. They've been #1 in the country multiple times. They've only been been outside the national top 20 on 2 occasions (1992 and 1999). They've never fallen outside the top 25. They've quite often averaged over 16k for a full season which is just an amazing number for college basketball. Even in down years, Illini basketball draws very very well.
To the best of my knowledge, since the opening of Assembly Hall, we have never averaged below the 13,000 mark until this year. I said 1983 before but if you look at our numbers vs the NCAA's, it's over 13,000. Even if you use the NCAA's numbers, that mark was good for 11th best in the country, still an impressive feat.
Right now, it looks like we could finish outside the top 25 in national attendance for the first time in our program's history. It's tough to say for sure. It's going to depend where other programs end up and what our attendance is over the last 3 home games. Indiana should draw very well regardless but I can't imagine Rutgers or Minnesota helping.
Anyways, the overall picture isn't good at all. The attendance numbers are very very poor no matter how you put it, and that's after spending 160 million on what is essentially a new stadium, and eliminating what are historically the games that will hurt your attendance the most (November home games). Perhaps as key as that is that the program can't sell the big money suites.
I can't imagine the new AD looking at that and think the program is in good shape under John Groce. Even in bad years we've drawn much better than we are this year. Just for comparison, in 2007 we averaged 16,618. In Weber's final year we drew 15k. Both very strong numbers. Attendance is the one constantly great thing about Illini basketball, but thag seems to be dying under Groce.