STrib: Largest WBB Crowds in Williams Arena


Will Paige Bueckers and other top Minnesota basketball prospect make it to the game? That will be a good showcase for them of what is possible if they decide to stay home and don the maroon and gold.

It will be great to see The Barn rocking again for women's basketball.
 

While seeing bigs crowd might slightly impress Bueckers, I personally would rather have her at the more competitive games. More upside. Shows if they can compete with NCAA type teams, displays weaknesses that the coaches could show where she could fit in and fix or help negate those issues. While I'm not saying don't have her at the opening game, I personally would like her to see the Syracuse game. My guess is most big ten games are in the middle of her HS season so might be harder to get her to those. Syracuse I expect to be our most competitive NC game.

If I remember correctly, Bueckers was at the Maryland game last year. Wondering if it was eye-opening for her to see a Stollings-gopher team completely blow the doors off of Brenda's Maryland team.

Will Paige Bueckers and other top Minnesota basketball prospect make it to the game? That will be a good showcase for them of what is possible if they decide to stay home and don the maroon and gold.

It will be great to see The Barn rocking again for women's basketball.
 

What do you think the home crowd attendance be at the home opener?
 

What do you think the home crowd attendance be at the home opener?

In the lengthier article about the attendance, they were projecting a sellout with only 500 tickets remaining. Capacity is 14,625. The record was stated as 14,363. If they don’t sell all the tickets, would giving away the remaining ones be considered a sellout?
 


Give them to young girls who are dreaming to be the next Lindsay Whalen.

Just as Paige Bueckers, Sara Scalia, the Gopher recruits from Iowa, were dreaming about the possibilities of playing basketball, Lindsay Whalen has inspired a generation of young girls.
 

What do you think the home crowd attendance be at the home opener?

Whalen and the marketing department have been working hard since she was hired last April to sell out Williams (capacity 14,625) for that night. Single game attendance record possible. Capacity is 14,625.

Only 2,000 tickets remain for the season opener on November 9th.

Just checked the website and best available i could get 4 tickets was in the upper deck. Could be quite the crowd for this one.

There's only 500 tickets left until we #PackTheBarn!

Whalen ... has a lot of memories to pull from ... perhaps most powerful, is her memory of a day in early February of 2004 - Whalen’s senior year - when the Gophers whipped fifth-ranked Penn State in front of 14,363 fans.

Less than 200 tickets remain for Gophers women’s BB opener.

130 tickets left as of Oct 16, per Lindsay at the Tucker Center Lecture.

Do the math, and the Barn attendance record for WBB is unofficially broken. It only remains to park our butts in the seats, and watch the season begin.

The six biggest crowds in Gophers women’s basketball history:
13,425 Mar. 23, 2004 vs. Kansas State
13,638 Jan. 25, 2004 vs. Michigan State
13,817 Jan. 11, 2004 vs. Iowa
14,203 Feb. 20, 2005 vs. Wisconsin
14,363 Feb. 8, 2004 vs. Penn State
> 14,495 Nov. 9, 2018 vs. New Hampshire
 

Took a quick look on site but didn't see any mention of TV on the opening night. With a sell out and all you'd think it might draw some attention from the BIG Network. Has anyone heard anything? I'll be flying home about the same time as the game and I'd like to DVR it if possible.
 

It is supposed to be on BTN Plus, 8:00 PM Friday, Nov. 8.
 




Just for grins, I googled for all-time single-game NCAA women's basketball attendance records. No definitive answer yet, since most results talk only about total season attendance, and average-game attendance.

But it seems likely that the single-game record is held by South Carolina, because they seem to have the largest arena - Colonial Life Arena at 18,000 capacity - and they've sold it out. For the 2017-18 season, for instance, South Carolina was far-and-away the winner in both largest single-game attendance as well as total/average attendance. Per https://www.postandcourier.com/spor...cle_46e4c5b2-7584-11e8-b192-971656c9db3f.html , "The NCAA released its official attendance numbers for women’s basketball on Thursday, showing that South Carolina led the way in average and total home attendance, total attendance for all games and highest regular-season single-game attendance for the 2017-18 season."

Furthermore, "The sell-out crowd of 18,000 that attended South Carolina’s game against UConn on Feb. 1 was the largest regular-season crowd in the nation, and the 11,085 fans who attended the NCAA Tournament first-round games in Columbia made up the season’s largest NCAA Tournament crowd prior to the Final Four." So it's a good guess that the single-game regular-season attendance record for women's basketball is 18,000. With the Barn capacity at 14,625, we can't compete with the larger arena.

But per the above article, no other team comes close to South Carolina's record, suggesting that in all likelihood the Barn has the second-largest capacity among NCAA WBB arenas - or at least, if there is some non-South-Carolina arena larger than the Barn, then they probably haven't sold that out thus far. Should that be the case (admittedly speculative), then the Gopher women's basketball program already owns the second-place single-game attendance record, and is simply breaking their own record.

There was one hit that claimed that Iowa State held the single-game record, but my analysis of that one strongly suggests that it was bogus. I can provide my rationale later if anyone is interested, but for now I'm just calling the Iowa State claim "fake news."
 
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It is supposed to be on BTN Plus, 8:00 PM Friday, Nov. 9.

Hungan1, do you have a source for that (so that, hopefully, the following analysis can be proved wrong)?

The earlier statement about TV coverage of our home opener appears to be incorrect, at least as near as I can determine. In fact, unless someone can find evidence to the contrary, it seems as if there is no national or regional TV coverage at all - in particular, nothing on the BTN family of networks or their affiliates.

I first checked the BTN schedule via BTN2Go, and on Nov. 9 at that time slot ( https://www.btn2go.com/schedule?day=2018-11-09&tids=25 ) the only scheduled Gopher BTN coverage is Minnesota/Wisconsin men's ice hocktey on BTN2Go/FSN/FSW, and Indiana/Minnesota volleyball on BTN Plus. The good news is that they're covering our nationally ranked volleyball team, who is (as I speak, through the Iowa match) undefeated in the B1G. The bad news is that apparently there is no BTN TV coverage, after all, of our historic sellout of the Barn for Gopher women's basketball's inaugural home game (since that BTN-Plus time slot is occupied by volleyball).

Then I double-checked the article, Big Ten Announces Women's Basketball Television Schedule ( https://bigten.org/news/2018/9/6/big-ten-announces-womens-basketball-television-schedule.aspx ). It states that "National television coverage for Big Ten women’s basketball begins on the opening Sunday of the season, Nov. 11, live on BTN when Northwestern plays host to Duke in the Wildcats’ first game at newly-refurbished Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston." The referenced PDF schedule ( https://bigten.org/documents/2018/9/6//2018_19_B1G_WBB_TV_Schedule.pdf?id=6067 ) confirms this - no BTN TV games earlier than the Nov. 11 Duke/NW game.

I checked ESPN's NCAAW Div I master schedule ( http://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/schedule/_/date/20181109/group/50 ), and nothing shows up under the National TV coverage column for our Nov. 9 game against New Hampshire. Argh!!

Furthermore, ESPN's press release ( https://espnmediazone.com/us/press-...ry-leading-womens-college-basketball-coverage ) states that "ESPN’s extensive coverage of women’s college basketball continues this season, with more than 135 matchups across ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network and Longhorn Network, with an additional 1,500 games on ESPN3, SEC Network +, ACC Network Extra, and ESPN+, the first-ever multi-sport, direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service from The Walt Disney Company’s Direct-to-Consumer and International group and ESPN. Throughout the regular season, more than 5,000 college basketball matchups will be available across ESPN platforms. Games that will be available on ESPN+ will be revealed in the coming weeks." But at the bottom of the page, they seem to only show a subset of these 5,000+ matchups to be shown on some network. Where does one go to see if we might be streamed on ESPN3 or ESPN+ or Disney Direct-to-Consumer, for instance? Or is the fact that we're missing off the above master schedule, definitive.

Does all that mean we struck out as far as TV coverage goes? Or does it imply that we have to take the initiative and shop around for some other network to cover it? Maybe we should convince ESPN that this is a notable event, and to send out a team to cover it (including on-site analyst)? I'd personally like to see them send out Rebecca Lobo or Kara Lawson or LaChina Robinson to cover the event. Or perhaps Rachel's team-mate/buddy Chiney Ogwumike. [Rach, can you get on that one?] Maybe we need to alert Mechelle Voepel or Doris Burke that they're missing out on an opportunity to broadcast a historic event.

Perhaps local TV could at least cover it. I'm not a media guru, so I'm clueless as to what the options are. Clearly, one of our local TV channel's (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox Sports North) ought to pick up on the opportunity to broadcast the entire game, not just mention the event in a 15-second nightly-sports-news spot, right after all the high-school football scores are scrolled down the screen. In any event, it appears that at the moment, we're high and dry in terms of TV coverage. Please, somebody convince me that I missed something. If not, then maybe we need to start a Twitter campaign.
 
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BTN Plus is a streaming service for individual games. It’s not a cable channel.
There doesn’t appear to be any women’s basketball games showing up on the BTN2Go schedule (neglect), but the Gopher schedule shows it playing on BTN Plus.
 



Just for grins, I googled for all-time single-game NCAA women's basketball attendance records. No definitive answer yet, since most results talk only about total season attendance, and average-game attendance.

But it seems likely that the single-game record is held by South Carolina, because they seem to have the largest arena - Colonial Life Arena at 18,000 capacity - and they've sold it out. For the 2017-18 season, for instance, South Carolina was far-and-away the winner in both largest single-game attendance as well as total/average attendance. Per https://www.postandcourier.com/spor...cle_46e4c5b2-7584-11e8-b192-971656c9db3f.html , "The NCAA released its official attendance numbers for women’s basketball on Thursday, showing that South Carolina led the way in average and total home attendance, total attendance for all games and highest regular-season single-game attendance for the 2017-18 season."

For fun I looked up the 2002 Minnesota/Wisconsin game played at a sold out Kohl center (watch it on he internet-it's a Whalen, McCarville and Frese classic). Attendance was listed at 17,142. According to the Badger notes that was the 5th highest attended WBB game in the nation during the 2001-02 season. Minnesota won 92-85 and the then 5th rank Badgers have never fully recovered.
 

BTN Plus is a streaming service for individual games. It’s not a cable channel.
There doesn’t appear to be any women’s basketball games showing up on the BTN2Go schedule (neglect), but the Gopher schedule shows it playing on BTN Plus.

OK, that makes sense.

There's currently a slight difference between how the GopherSports schedule pages are set up, between volleyball and basketball. For basketball the GopherSports schedule page currently just has informational notes that it will be broadcast on BTN Plus (or wherever), but they are not clickable yet. It's probably the case that ...

(1) These have simply not been set up yet with (for example for Nov. 9th game) the BTN Plus organization. Which would explain why they don't show up yet on the BTN2Go schedule either. But they'll be set up and be clickable on BTN2Go (and probably on the GopherSports schedule page too) in time for the game. [So this is no problem.]

For volleyball the GopherSports schedule page currently has clickable icons for future games to be broadcast (wherever) but if you click, it just tells you it's a future event (come back later). For past games that were broadcast, it generally has a replay option. So currently there's a "watch online" button for tonight's Nebraska game; there's a "replay" button for the Oct 13 game we played against Northwestern; and there eventually will be a "replay" button for last night's Iowa game (since it streamed on BTN Plus), but that has just not been setup yet.

So it looks like Basketball has not yet been configured with BTN/BTN Plus, whereas volleyball has been setup, but of course if you click on a future volleyball game you go nowhere. That being said, on Nov 9 the GopherSports volleyball schedule shows no TV streaming or cable coverage at all. Yet the BTN2Go schedule does show BTN Plus coverage of volleyball that night. It could be that ...

(2) Streaming of volleyball on Nov 9 was added later on, since the team is doing so well, but they forgot to update the volleyball GopherSports schedule to reflect that. [So this is no problem either, you just connect via BTN2Go instead. Somebody should fix the volleyball GopherSports schedule, tho, since if someone only looks there, they won't realize that there is coverage.]

Since BTN Plus is streaming media, there's no reason it can't cover both at once. The BTN Plus shows are apparently done by Gopher students. So it's only an issue of having double crews and double equipment available. And that's no problem, since they're doing a double stream today actually.

So later on, they will configure the basketball broadcasts with BTN Plus (streaming) or BTN (cable or streaming, for the latter you first prove you have cable) or whatever. And Nov 9 basketball will show up on BTN2Go schedule after that.

So it turns out to be no-worries.
 

Just for grins, I googled for all-time single-game NCAA women's basketball attendance records. No definitive answer yet, since most results talk only about total season attendance, and average-game attendance.

But it seems likely that the single-game record is held by South Carolina, because they seem to have the largest arena - Colonial Life Arena at 18,000 capacity - and they've sold it out. For the 2017-18 season, for instance, South Carolina was far-and-away the winner in both largest single-game attendance as well as total/average attendance. Per https://www.postandcourier.com/spor...cle_46e4c5b2-7584-11e8-b192-971656c9db3f.html , "The NCAA released its official attendance numbers for women’s basketball on Thursday, showing that South Carolina led the way in average and total home attendance, total attendance for all games and highest regular-season single-game attendance for the 2017-18 season."

Furthermore, "The sell-out crowd of 18,000 that attended South Carolina’s game against UConn on Feb. 1 was the largest regular-season crowd in the nation, and the 11,085 fans who attended the NCAA Tournament first-round games in Columbia made up the season’s largest NCAA Tournament crowd prior to the Final Four." So it's a good guess that the single-game regular-season attendance record for women's basketball is 18,000. With the Barn capacity at 14,625, we can't compete with the larger arena.

But per the above article, no other team comes close to South Carolina's record, suggesting that in all likelihood the Barn has the second-largest capacity among NCAA WBB arenas - or at least, if there is some non-South-Carolina arena larger than the Barn, then they probably haven't sold that out thus far. Should that be the case (admittedly speculative), then the Gopher women's basketball program already owns the second-place single-game attendance record, and is simply breaking their own record.

There was one hit that claimed that Iowa State held the single-game record, but my analysis of that one strongly suggests that it was bogus. I can provide my rationale later if anyone is interested, but for now I'm just calling the Iowa State claim "fake news."

http://stats.ncaa.org/season_divisions/14100/attendance_sg_highs
 




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