Crisler Center Attendance

Saturday was very exciting. How are you supporting the team from your couch at home?

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Haven’t had the teams recently for one. Second is no recruits that spark peoples interests. Say what you want about the class and Xavier is ranked this and ibi ranked that or even poole for that matter. None of them spark an interest in any “casual” fan. They haven’t even played 1 second of college bball!!!

But for me, I don’t live close enough to make it to games. Back in the Nat champ. run I went to a couple home games and an away game cause the team was legit. They need to get that back for the casual fans.

Fans just need to be more enthusiastic overall. Seems to be great one game and just blah the next. Better marketing can never be a bad thing either.

I have season tickets. I live an hour away. I’m not a “casual” fan. Few people who post here are.

I would go to more games if better teams came in and better start times. Already 3 games this year have had a 9pm tip, not feasible to attend those games and wake up at 5am for work. So their top games this year have mostly been at 9pm and the other teams coming in have been Elon, Houston Baptist, Delaware St, Northern Kentucky, Youngstown St, and Bryant. That can be a very tough pill to swallow for people that want to buy in, Throw in a team that’s ok but certainly not where they want to be it’s a tough investment to rationalize. This is from the perspective of buying season tickets the secondary ticket market is a much better option.

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I hate the 9 p.m. starts, too. Nothing we can do about that. TV dictates.

Product meaning style of play lacks excitement. If you think the way we play is exciting you are entitled to your opinion and I respect that I just don’t agree.

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Sane1, I’m not talking about people on here on these forums. I’m talking about the people who do live close and the older fans. I hope no one on umhoops is a “casual” fan. I’m not a casual fan either.
If I lived an hour or within an hour of Ann Arbor I would go to. I live 5 hours away west burbs of Chicago.
I’m talking about the guy out there say to his buddy…hey wanna go see Michigan play tonight? And his buddy being non chalant and just like…mmmmm nah I’m good just going to watch it on tv. If that’s me I would be like hell yes lets go. But I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that don’t care if they go or not.

But like jsmith said and Albrechtshotfake said, its style of play and lack of good games. Don’t get me wrong, again I would go to games if I lived close, but its just not exciting and worth a 5 hour drive. I did it during the championship run and that’s what I want and that’s the kind of ball I expect out of Michigan. I don’t expect them to make championship runs year in and year but expect better performances and a better overall quality of talent in my own opinion.

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It’s just about winning and losing, not style of play, IMO. I don’t expect someone in Chicago to make it to games. I’m 67. I go to 80% of the games, sell or give away my tickets to the rest. There just aren’t enough fans like me. Even during the Fab 5 era and the 80s when we had a lot of talent, Crisler was not full for most games.

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I agree that it’s not about style of play. I don’t think there’s any sort of data to back up that it affects attendance. I think it’s mostly just winning and losing. When we were winning in 2012-2014 the fans were there. Now they’re not.

And how do you win…recruit better and get better overall talent. Coaches have swung for the Plan A guys and missed unfortunately. Luckily they can coach up these kids and play at a higher level and improve their game…unlike some coaches around.

I have said all along that this schedule was developed with a “no bad losses” (but few good wins) narrative in mind. While I hope the selection committee rewards them for it this year, I would like to see them bring in a few less-terrible mid-majors in future.

Scheduling is hard… The Big Ten is down this year which is a big reason for the no average wins. In normal years there are some Big Ten teams in the 50-100 range.

You play a conference tournament, you play the two games in challenges, you play a home-and-home with SMU. Those are all things that you want to see teams doing. Sure a couple of mid-majors that are average to above-average would be good, but if Michigan played Oakland instead of Delaware State one game it isn’t going to change anything.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another poor home sched next year. They have Cinci on the road, most likely won’t have a Gavitt Games appearance at home, they have their little preseason tourney in NY, they will most likely be at home for ACC/B1G challenge. After that it’s a guessing game but even after this year you would hope they would step it up to get more interest.

Can you guys point to a schedule that someone played this year that you’d like to see them emulate?

How many teams are playing home-and-homes these days? It’s not that common with all of the neutral court games.

What…I disagree about the Oakland/Delaware at. Comparison lol. Oakland tougher conference and actually wouldn’t surprise if they gave UM a run.

No bad losses??? Their blow out losses were bad losses. That could be a deal breaker if it comes down to them and another team with those 3 or 4 blow outs. Committee won’t like that for the big dance when your playing the top teams

It wasn’t a great home sched for this team but Xavier did a terrific job imo.

Team RPI Rank
Dayton 17
USC 33
Alabama 42
Michigan 50
Auburn 139
Wake Forest 128
Wright St 161
Missouri 201
West Kent 210
Miami Oh 217
Nrth Kent 273

This non conference SOS was ranked 95th not out of this world but a far cry from 179. No top 10 RPI teams but 5 top 50 teams, 3 other teams between 100-161. You can’t really avoid the 200’s every team will have a few.

Maybe you’re right it might not change all that much from a selection committee or fan engagement perspective, except for a few more competitive home games. That said, I still believe that they purposely avoided Oakland- or UDM-level teams after last year’s experience with EMU and NJIT – there is a huge quality difference between a solid MAC or Horizon team and a team projected to finish dead last in the SWAC or NEC.

To answer your question re a good balanced non-conference schedule to emulate, maybe look at Virginia. High majors included Cal, WVU, Villanova, OSU; mid-majors included George Washington, William & Mary, Long Beach State, Oakland, George Mason and Lehigh. Only two terrible teams on their schedule, and one of those was Bryant.

I’m not arguing that the home losses v Indiana and MSU weren’t nausea-inducing, just reiterating the popular narrative that Michigan has avoided “bad losses” as defined by opponent’s RPI (which appears to be how the committee defines them – not sure if they seriously consider margin of defeat).

Not saying Oakland is not much better than Delaware State. Saying that replacing one game like that (especially because it would probably be at the Palace as Oakland likes to do) wouldn’t really be a huge benefit to the schedule overall.