West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

[Columbuseer]

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

"They were sending the message to everyone in the arena that their d**** cell phone was more important than doing their job."

And WLU was sending a message to everyone that they were a second rate program that just doesn't care. Could you ever imagine such a thing happening at an Ohio State game? Professionalism breeds professionalism.

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

"They were sending the message to everyone in the arena that their d**** cell phone was more important than doing their job."

And WLU was sending a message to everyone that they were a second rate program that just doesn't care. Could you ever imagine such a thing happening at an Ohio State game? Professionalism breeds professionalism.

I agree. It is generally called the "pygmalion effect". Basically, people tend to live up (or down) to the expectations of those in authority or whom they admire/respect, etc. People will often raise their game if you raise expectations, without any change in personnel.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

This isn't a unique problem to just West Liberty. I travel to a lot of D2 games in football and basketball. Most are treated worse than high school events. Some, far worse.

Go to a high school football game at North Allegheny near Pittsburgh. They call it 'The University' for a reason. It's run like a D1 event/program -- and 99% of D2's would die to have that gate and atmosphere.

Overall attendance figures in the MEC and PSAC for football and basketball are just awful. Embarrassing, actually. There are (some, but very, very few) exceptions. The schools treat the events like low-budget high school events -- and in turn draw low-budget, small high school crowds.

IUP runs the KCAC like a D1 game-day environment. Joe has a 'game day' staff of at least 15-20 people. I think he has guy to take his shoes off after the game. The place has everything except an atmosphere (for 95% of the home games).

To the school, the games have to be treated as events and a business. Think of a Mercedes car dealership. Think of Joe Bob's Used Car Lot. The VAST majority of schools in the MEC/PSAC (and, likely, D2) function like Joe Bob's. It starts at the top and trickles down -- all the way to the nightly 250 people who stumble in to most of these venues over the winter.

You go to a basketball game at places like Edinboro, Clarion, Slippery Rock ... it's utterly amazing how bad the 'game day' experience is and that starts in the athletic departments.

[Sportsnut]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

There has to be a way to get these college kids out of their dorm room and away from their phones and electronic devices for a couple of hours to attend home games. Most D2 schools have gone to several Thursday night games to help attendance. On a typical Thursday night WL is still lucky to get several hundred students to a home football game. Wish I knew the answer, even D1 programs are fighting to get attendance up due to lack of support and games being watched on the "big Screen" at home or bars.

[FlyHawk98]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

When Watson was the AD there was another sports team who were under the basket mopping the floor for basketball. In turn that team received money for doing it. I'm not sure why/when that stopped happening.

[Layton]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Students will never come to football games unless they start winning, I usually go to the Thursday ones. It's the same for anyone in any sport win and people will come, unless you're the rare case like Jesuit where people still don't go watch them play basketball can't figure that one out but I'm sure there are other examples

[ctrabs74]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

This isn't a unique problem to just West Liberty. I travel to a lot of D2 games in football and basketball. Most are treated worse than high school events. Some, far worse.

Go to a high school football game at North Allegheny near Pittsburgh. They call it 'The University' for a reason. It's run like a D1 event/program -- and 99% of D2's would die to have that gate and atmosphere.

Overall attendance figures in the MEC and PSAC for football and basketball are just awful. Embarrassing, actually. There are (some, but very, very few) exceptions. The schools treat the events like low-budget high school events -- and in turn draw low-budget, small high school crowds.

IUP runs the KCAC like a D1 game-day environment. Joe has a 'game day' staff of at least 15-20 people. I think he has guy to take his shoes off after the game. The place has everything except an atmosphere (for 95% of the home games).

To the school, the games have to be treated as events and a business. Think of a Mercedes car dealership. Think of Joe Bob's Used Car Lot. The VAST majority of schools in the MEC/PSAC (and, likely, D2) function like Joe Bob's. It starts at the top and trickles down -- all the way to the nightly 250 people who stumble in to most of these venues over the winter.

You go to a basketball game at places like Edinboro, Clarion, Slippery Rock ... it's utterly amazing how bad the 'game day' experience is and that starts in the athletic departments.

Another factor in building interest in a program is how a coach interacts with the community. One example I'm seeing on the Midwest boards is Bellarmine and head coach Scotty Davenport:

http://www.d2football.com/forum/show...51#post2040151

The thing is [Davenport] is not just a great basketball coach but a great promoter as well. He takes his job as being one of, if not the spokesperson, for the Bellarmine way very seriously and is out there spreading the word. Ten years of having him to do that for a mid major is heckuva lot more valuable than 2 or 4 years from some young guy that doesn't know how to promote anything other than getting some high school kid to play basketball for him.

Bellarmine ranked seventh in D2 in home attendance (1,721 per game; Knights Hall seats 3,000, so that's a capacity of 57.38 percent). When Bellarmine reached the Elite Eight in Evansville, Ind. - which is a couple hours away via I-64 in Louisville - a couple of years ago, the largest crowds, not surprisingly, were for the Knights (if they hadn't gotten jobbed out of a semifinal win against Florida Southern, the Ford Center would've gone crazy that Saturday).

That you're drawing a crowd which is only marginally more than IUP's average attendance in a market which includes a basketball powerhouse like the University of Louisville (even if UofL's head coach is an annoying clown - and I'm being polite) with the majority of your roster being hometown-area talent (most of the players played high school hoops within an hour or so from Louisville - and that covers two states with incredible high school hoops talent in Kentucky and Indiana) should be a template for other Atlantic region programs on how a D2 hoops program can build a 'brand' on and off campus.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

We've had a very strong football program since the 80s ... I can usually count less than 80 students at each game (and IUP has a big enrollment). For every Slippery Rock and Shepherd, who both draw incredibly well, there are hundreds of the rest of us drawing awful every fall.

While many of us on here think it's a good product, students do not. It's boring. Slow. Dull. The schools do nothing to create a buzz about it. Most outlaw tailgates so that 'buzz' is gone, too.

Most students would much rather be at the game in Morgantown or State College. Those games have the 'college feel' while the vast majority of D2 is actually a worse atmosphere than where the kids went to high school. It stinks but is just reality. I've long felt the key to D2 attendance is with the local community. Forget the students. D2 schools have been trying to crack that nut for decades. It's not happening. Build the local fan base and the years when you get certain classes who participate more ... all the better. The 'locals' are who spend money at the games by actually buying tickets, refreshments, etc., -- and they write the donation checks. They also aren't transient to the town. That's exactly what IUP basketball has done. They could play at 3 a.m. and the same 1,200 townies would be in the stands buying the $9 beer.

You look at 'this generation' ... they can't stay off those phones and crap for more than 10 minutes. Surely we're not expecting them to sit through a 3-4 hour football game at a level most of them consider as being lame.


The 'culture' Slippery Rock and Shepherd have created for football is amazing. Those are events. Not games. Huge difference. If only the rest of our athletic departments could figure that out.

[CardinalAlum]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Students will never come to football games unless they start winning, I usually go to the Thursday ones. It's the same for anyone in any sport win and people will come, unless you're the rare case like Jesuit where people still don't go watch them play basketball can't figure that one out but I'm sure there are other examples

Well I can explain that one: Jesuit's admin is extremely incompetent when it comes to advertising (and other things). Years ago, when I was a student there they made sure everyone knew about every event. Athletics, student development, academics, and SGA would make a list of everything happening on campus that coming week and they would sent it to all students, the local community and alumni, and if there was a big event, like the West Lib game, you'd practically get daily reminders to show up or watch online. But for some reason they stopped doing that. Nowadays, you're lucky to get an update about teams being in the NCAA tournament and sometimes they'll forget to do that. It honestly feels like some brilliant admin decided that our athletics website was all you need for promoting our games and if a team wants more exposure they've got to do it themselves. That said SGA does occasionally run a whiteout or something to draw attention but for the most part advertising seems to be the team's responsibility. There are some coaches and teams that know how to promote and others that don't even try. Due to that, events will either draw a crowd or nothing at all. Students can only show up to games if they know they're happening. For example, basketball rarely sends out information to let people know there's a game and no one shows up. At the same time, Doyle and the wrestling team is outstanding when it comes to letting people know about meets and doing giveaways and because of that the gym is usually packed for their matches. They probably have the highest attendance numbers out of every team because they advertise everything; unfortunately I don't have anything to back that up because athletics only bothers to count paid attendance at basketball games; but that's another rant for another day.

[Penguins87]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Won't for long. Doyle resigned to be director of enrollment

[TheBigCat2192]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Students will never come to football games unless they start winning

Anecdotal obviously, but based on my time at Bloomsburg this doesn't really hold up. BU's worst season was 7-4, they won the PSAC once, played in the PSAC title game a second time, went to the playoffs three times (and two of them were home games), and the stands were still regularly half-empty. The only exceptions were usually homecoming and Parent's Day.

[Layton]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Anecdotal obviously, but based on my time at Bloomsburg this doesn't really hold up. BU's worst season was 7-4, they won the PSAC once, played in the PSAC title game a second time, went to the playoffs three times (and two of them were home games), and the stands were still regularly half-empty. The only exceptions were usually homecoming and Parent's Day.

I was talking about WL specifically and noted there are other exceptions to winning programs and still low attendance like Jesuit basketball, but I guess D2 isn't the greatest wow factor and gives off that intense game environment like good D1 teams do. Our basketball games is an exception because of the tradition and large crowds every game but that's a rarity I would assume. For football we obviously aren't very good and I'm a total football junkie so I try to go to the Thursday games since wvu plays on most saturdays. Not very many students my age are sports junkies these days I guess at least at WL football games but I'm sure if we started winning a lot more would come. However we have a good amount come to the basketball games but it usually only has an impact if we play Jesuit of course or fairmont when they're good

[KnightStalker]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Bellarmine ranked seventh in D2 in home attendance (1,721 per game; Knights Hall seats 3,000, so that's a capacity of 57.38 percent).

Actually a few years ago BU did some upgrades to the seating that brought capacity down to 2200 which means capacity of 78 percent. But to add to your point, Davenport is out on various sports radio programs promoting BU each week and along with social media he pushes to get Knights Hall full. Actually think that if it wasn't for scheduling quirks this year (the good non-conference games were all on the road) the average attendance would have been much higher.

[ctrabs74]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Actually a few years ago BU did some upgrades to the seating that brought capacity down to 2200 which means capacity of 78 percent. But to add to your point, Davenport is out on various sports radio programs promoting BU each week and along with social media he pushes to get Knights Hall full. Actually think that if it wasn't for scheduling quirks this year (the good non-conference games were all on the road) the average attendance would have been much higher.

Apparently, the NCAA stats folks didn't get the memo, but there are a lot of teams in this region - especially in the PSAC - which would kill just to break 1,000/game.