Spent the day at the Big Ten tourney. A few thoughts. The bottom-tier teams, in several cases injury depleted, are just bad basketball teams. Purdue, Wisconsin and Minnesota were just painful to watch on offense.
Reported attendance of 18,000+ for the evening session last night is a joke. Less than half that, and they didn’t even open the upper deck for seating. Iowa fans buying all session tickets inflates all numbers.
Logistically, for Iowa sessions, the tourney is likely to be a s___ show. Doors open 1 hour before tip, can’t stay in arena after earlier session. Iowa fans will line up hours before game and skip earlier session. Those of us wanting to watch both sessions today are in a tough spot. Not sure it will be possible to see the end of the first session and the beginning of the Iowa game. Selling large numbers of general admission tickets for a sold-out arena that will actually fill up for Iowa sessions is a really bad idea. The WBB Big Ten tourney has never seen anything like this, and they seem understaffed, unprepared and overwhelmed. When you talk to arena personnel and event organizers about how it will work and what to do, you are not filled with confidence.
Stadium vendors also seem unprepared. Desired food options were sold out before halftime of the first game of the evening session last night. But you can’t leave between games in the same session to go get food because of no reentry rules.
Hoping today is redeemed by better basketball.