70% raise for Arizona's Adia Barnes

[Plebe]

All signs are trending up for this program.

Arizona Board of Regents approves raise for UA's Adia Barnes

UA women's hoops coach gets 70 percent raise to $400,000 per year.

tucson.com

A just move by the Board of Regents. Her salary had been the lowest in the Pac-12.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Wow, that's a significant raise. I hope UA continues their upward trend under her guidance.

 

[eebmg]

With the crowds they are attracting, still a bargain.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

With the crowds they are attracting, still a bargain.

I don't expect the crowds to be "huge" by any means next season.

But the reality is that they have always drawn well for the state of the program, and are in a college basketball town (ok, its mostly men's basketball, and its a large town, but . . .)

It is, however, unquestionably, a bargain. Arizona is generally stingy with its coaches. I'm pretty sure she is committed to stay here for quite a while (not forever, because I do think her salary will never be great here), it is her alma mater and a great place to develop. Like Banghart at Princeton, to name someone who stayed quite a while before moving up to a bigger stage.

 

[eebmg]

I don't expect the crowds to be "huge" by any means next season.

But the reality is that they have always drawn well for the state of the program, and are in a college basketball town (ok, its mostly men's basketball, and its a large town, but . . .)

It is, however, unquestionably, a bargain. Arizona is generally stingy with its coaches. I'm pretty sure she is committed to stay here for quite a while (not forever, because I do think her salary will never be great here), it is her alma mater and a great place to develop. Like Banghart at Princeton, to name someone who stayed quite a while before moving up to a bigger stage.

Oh. I was basing this observation on the WNIT crowds AZ was able to attract. I had seen snapshots of the crowd and they were really into it

What does the WNIT run mean for Arizona women’s basketball?

It’s a great boost for the present team, but what are the long-term benefits for the program?

www.azdesertswarm.com

 

[nwhoopfan]

I was just looking at attendance figures recently. While Arizona wasn't among the national leaders for average attendance, I believe they were #3 for 1 year increase in attendance. Nearly doubled from the previous season. That's certainly trending in the right direction.

Confirmed. Jumped from 1933 to 3675. With the spike in attendance during the WNIT and increased interest among the fan base, it's easy to see that number increasing again. It's pretty sad but that was already #3 in the Pac 12, ahead of more well established programs like Stanford, Arizona St. and UCLA.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

I was just looking at attendance figures recently. While Arizona wasn't among the national leaders for average attendance, I believe they were #3 for 1 year increase in attendance. Nearly doubled from the previous season. That's certainly trending in the right direction.

Confirmed. Jumped from 1933 to 3675. With the spike in attendance during the WNIT and increased interest among the fan base, it's easy to see that number increasing again. It's pretty sad but that was already #3 in the Pac 12, ahead of more well established programs like Stanford, Arizona St. and UCLA.

Arizona has and traditionally has drawn about 1500 - 2000+ per game, without looking it up. I don't remember ever having less than 1000. Their numbers each year are inflated by a "school" game that has 6000 attendance or more, and of course attendance spikes a bit for the school up north and certain other promotional events (for example, we had a Naismith descendant as a guest to celebrate the anniversary of basketball, with Lute and the Men's team and Wilbur, plus the mayor etc. all present this year) . PAC attendance is better than pre-season.

The jump you note is almost certainly due to the WNIT, I'm pretty sure we never hit 3000 except the WNIT.

That said, it is SOLID attendance, and we have drawn more than 1000 per game even in the very lean years at the end of Niya Butt's coaching tenure.

I would expect that - at least for the PAC games - 3000 + is a reasonable expectation next year. We will see, we will certainly do our part and have our season tix.

 

[bennyskid]

UA has huge potential. Tucson is like Storrs and Knoxville - biggish towns with little-or-no competition from pro sports. If they get 1% of the local population, that's 9800 people per game. (Compare OSU in Corvallis, which gets about 6% of the local population to WBB games.)

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

UA has huge potential. Tucson is like Storrs and Knoxville - biggish towns with little-or-no competition from pro sports. If they get 1% of the local population, that's 9800 people per game. (Compare OSU in Corvallis, which gets about 6% of the local population to WBB games.)

Thank you, I agree about the potential.

That said, Tucson might validly be compared to Knoxville (it even appears their metro populations are not hugely different), but a comparison to Storrs, or Athens Georgia as another example of a college town just doesn't work.

The similarity is that Tucson is a "college town", the difference is that Tucson really is a city (urban). I've been to Storrs, Athens and plenty of other college towns (not Corvallis, though, but Spokane yes) and we are, in fact, even more citified than Spokane seemed to be.