debellatio said:
If you look at the three teams below and above UM in the RPI conference rankings they all have neutral site conference tournaments. One of the conferences has the quarterfinals at the higher seed home gym and the semi-final and final at a neutral site. I wounder if they have the same attendance issue or if it is an issue the BSC has. Could the lack of attendance be because the conference is so spread out where the conferences in the east and south are geographically closer together and the travel isn't as bad. Just rambling some thoughts.
Outside of UND, MSU, and UM, every other school in the BIg Sky has to compete with much larger programs within the state or their regional area to compete with in terms of fans. Eastern and Idaho compete with WSU and Gonzaga and will never win that battle. UNC competes with both Colorado Schools and Denver U. NAU is probably the 4th best Arizona D1 program now. PSU has both Pac 12 schools nearby. Sac has too many schools in their state to count as bigger. SUU gets trumped by USU, Weber, and Utah. The only school that does well in these States is Weber...Thus, regardless where you have the tourney, most schools are going to have little support. And in reality, even on campus sites, unless the host school is playing, attendance is pretty poor at all the venues...