Meant to start this yesterday. However we have a home match against the team we are competing against to avoid the bye. Our only other home games are against NU and HU. Thursday was a must win and we won. This game is very close to a must win since we already lost to them, and in embarrassing fashion. This game appears to be critical for our quest to finish .500 or above in conference. Lose this one and we will have to steal one somewhere else, likely the road.

Towson is playing up and down. They beat bad teams and lose to the top teams. They are a physical team. We need to continue to defend the 3 well. They torched us from 3 last time. If they get hot we may be out of this one early. Butler will need to do well down low on the defensive side. We need to crash the boards hard and win the rebounding margin in this one. We can't afford to give Towson extra attempts. If we limit their 2nd chances and win the rebounding margin I think we win this one. If we don't I think we lose. It is not a good matchup for us but I expect it to be a low scoring slugfest and stay close throughout.

Vegas: TU -1

TU- 64
DU- 60

Up 40-33 at half. Big 3 at the end by Cam. If we limit their 2nd chances we can run away with this. Towson is shooting poorly. Gotta keep up the effort in the 2nd half

at the under 8 timeout now down 56-50. Not getting many stops and our offense has stalled and settling for late shot clock poor shots.

76-69 Towson wins.

Allen Betrand shot great and led all scorers with 31. Brian Fobbs was Towson's only other double-digit scorer with 19. Wynter shot great and had 27 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists. Butler shot 6-14 and had 13 points and 8 rebounds. Walton shot twos well but made 1 of 7 threes. He had 17 points, 3 rebounds, and 3 assists.

Where was the student section yesterday.

(02-09-2020 07:59 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  Where was the student section yesterday.

Nearly nonexistent, unfortunately. Spiker was asked post game about attendance and he was clearly frustrated and irritated over it. A shame since the Thursday night game seemed reasonably attended, youd figure a 2pm Saturday game would be at the height of people showing up (not too early from Friday drinking and done well before Saturday drinking). Didn't look like non students showed either, looked pretty barren.

The attendance was 1,162. It raised your average to 1,034, which is last in the CAA. If the season was over now, you would be last in the CAA for the third time in four seasons. Being in a big city in the northeast doesn't mean good attendance. Of 353 teams, 15 average under 600, and that includes the only two teams in Brooklyn. There are seven teams in NYC, and the six teams other than St. John's combine to average 1,178. 278 teams (78.5 percent) average over over 1,178. Three of the six Philadelphia teams (including Villanova which is technically in the suburb of Villanova) are in the bottom half. The bottom 38, which is 10.8 percent of the teams, includes American in D.C., Coppin State and Loyola (Maryland) in Baltimore, Boston U, and LIU and St. Francis (Brooklyn) in NYC. It also includes New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Fairleigh Dickinson, St. Peter's, and Sacred Heart in suburbs of NYC. Chicago State has the fourth worse attendance, but you can't blame fans or not going to the worst team in the NET and KenPom. The top average attendance by a team in or a little outside a big city is Maryland in 14th.

I think most know mid major basketball in a large city is always a tough sell. There are just too many options. To overcome that you have to market yourself well and put an entertaining product on the floor. Once you do that and build your fan base it is doable. Making athletics an important part of the culture of Drexel is also important, whether as a student or after. But you have to start when they are students and get them to buy into the program. If the school is constantly advertising and athletics are not a big part of that, its a tough uphill sledding operation.

I know for a fact that there are some people who take Drexel's lack of a strong sports culture as a reason they chose to attend. When the university is not prioritizing athletics, we unfortunately cannot expect the students to prioritize it either. But I continue to hold out hope, against all odds...

I am not saying athletics need to be the priority, but we need to accept the fact that if we wish to stay D1, your athletics should help bolster income for research and other things. It needs to be important and treated as such. Activities to get students involved and have pride in the school can only help. Most people when choosing a school want a great experience on top of a great education. Athletics can play a huge factor in both. Drexel already has a great education, athletics can and should continue to play a factor in making students time as great of an experience as possible.

Not just Drexel. Here's a link from the Daily Pennsylvanian concerning attendance at the Palestra.

https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/02/pa...ivy-league