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Message: [QUOTE="DefenseBB, post: 4842637, member: 7492"] As a born and bred New Englander, I grew up with all the local colleges competing against each other and the formation of the Big East to put these local schools together coalesced nicely for us fans to see. In the early days of the BE, PC was the WCBB force but after Geno arrived, PC fell on hard, hard times. But I digress. Last night Marquette played at Seton Hall as the one Top 25 game on the schedule which Marquette won thanks to a strong 3rd quarter. However, the issue is the game was played at Walsh Gymnasium and only 336 fans went. The optics of that small gym had one person commenting to me that it looked like a "Junior High quality gym" which was a bit hyperbolic in nature but their point was made. Adding insult to injury was the fact when I just logged into the SHU website to look at the season stats (and the attendance), the school had not updated the stats to include last night's game. Seriously, at 11 AM, the stats are still not updated? Keep in mind that the Seton Hall men's team also played last night at Georgetown and yes, their stats were updated last night (my wife is an SHU grad so we went into see the updated stats). My point being is UConn runs a fully functioning "Death Star" of operations where the stats, attendance and marketing are all 1st class but yet many of our local BE teams are simply not. SHU is averaging 630 fans per game (I manually added the numbers to calculate) and the quasi good news is we play SJU on Saturday at UBS Arena which SJU hopes garners 4,500+ fans. On the year, SJU is averaging 2,090 which is a huge jump up from last years 582 fans but still not what the conference needs to be taken seriously. The aforementioned PC is averaging 786 fans this year (and their HS like gym) but again, that is an improvement over last years 474 fans per game. Also, PC did jettison their prior coach and the new coach, Erin Batth has done a great job already but still has a long way to go. For the Big East to truly compete with the soon to be P4, these programs need to "up their commitment in all aspects" to be viewed as equals and to make in-roads for WCBB. Until that time, UConn, Marquette, Creighton and Villanova may completely separate themselves from the rest. I mean, it's not like the schools don't know how to make the effort, just look at the Men's programs but yet when it comes to the Women....:oops:. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach