Two of my buddies (fellow LU alums) and I will be making an effort to come to the game. Definitely wasn't planning on it two weeks ago. I hope there are others out there who feel a bit inspired by the two road wins...

All I know is I made every effort to go to ALL games when I lived in Chgo--Game in and game out. Win or lose--but full disclosure, it was much less expensive then.

Out team IS better this year--So much so that I wager some teams in the Valley now drealize there might be a new cellar dweller coming on--It will NOT be us.

I completely agree LU Rambler... I wasn't planning on going on Wednesday either, but now I want to! I hope other Rambler fans feel the same way.

On a side note: Is Loyola actively doing anything to make the students aware of this recent success? That sure would seem like an obvious thing to put on the "To-Do List"!

Maybe I'm just a pessimist. Who knows. All I do know is that success has never translated to more people in the seats. Hell, the last GOOD team we had (2006-2007) was 9-4 going into conference play (there was 1 early conference game against UWGB in there). Our losses were to #7 Ohio State, a SLU team that went 20-13, a Purdue team that went 22-12, and a Bradley team that went 22-13. That was one of our more exciting teams coming into the year with JR, Schilb and Majak. Lots of hype. We averaged 2,790. As a point of reference, last year, in that miserable, miserable year, we averaged 1,650.

Sure, we can maybe get out another thousand or so, but what this shows is that people don't care about LU basketball...exciting or not. They do, however, come out for good opponents. See Butler (any year), Kansas State (2010), WSU (last year). Since that 2006 season, we have averaged 3,755 against Butler. Including KSU and WSU, we average 3,991. Hell, add in that one year that DePaul actually came to the Joe and we averaged 4,013.

The moral of the story is that people don't care about a good or excited LU team. They only care about the opponent.

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Cigarboy sucks!

I agree with you, Go. There will sometimes feel like a bit of attendance momentum and then one or two losses and it falls off. That's a real shame. Last year at the Northern Iowa game, I dont know what the numbers were but it was a great crowd with Alumni Weekend going on. And guess what? Close game and the crowd helps get the Ramblers over the edge for a big win. It's hard to quantify but good crowds at home do a lot for a team.

We only had 2,723 for the UNI game.

People don't care about seeing a good team play Jackson State or Southern Utah. They just don't. What they do care about is seeing one of the top 25 teams in the country come and play at LU. Heck, let me further amend that. They care about seeing BIG NAME SCHOOLS play at LU. In 2005, we had Purdue come in as part of a 3 for 1. We had 4,125 in the old Joe. Folks know Purdue. They don't know Abilene Christian.

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Cigarboy sucks!

You're right again - and I just used UNI as an example as it was a lively crowd that was really into the game.

There's something to be said about having a small crowd that is into it. I'll gladly take that night in and night out. In fact, I think we need to rely on that because we aren't going to have a schedule full of MSU, Purdue, KSU, WSU, Butler year in and year out.

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Cigarboy sucks!

Speaking of UNI, they just missed getting into the AP Top 25 in today's poll. They got 83 votes. Wichita State moved up to #8.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/rankings

That was a good crowd.

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