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Message: [QUOTE="azfan, post: 4536730, member: 7748"] I know there is multi-causality for the absolute level of attendance in WBB as well as trend. The poker stat was from a colleague who teaches the anthropology of sport. I have reached out for him for citation and/or more recent data. ASU, like I would suspect some other institutions, inflates their WBB attendance. I attended most of those games and would be stunned if actual attendance was 50% of reported. I routinely moved from my general admission season ticket seat to within the second row of courtside. I can think of a handful of games with attendance over 2,000: recently U of A (mostly kitty fans driving up the I-10) and back in the day when Tennessee rolled in for a regional. As a fan of wbb I really can't understand the lack of interest. When hockey in the desert draws more than ASU women's basketball you know that there's an issue. What that issue is I can't pretend to understand but I can speculate. That speculation centers around causality for a lack of preference for women's basketball. I'm not certain to what extent that lack of preference can be turned by institutional marketing or subsidy. Back to the Duke example. There are clearly rabid basketball fans that attend Duke games. Obviously it's the men's game that draws and continues to draw. With a personality like Kara and a successful team I think it's clear that the preference for women's basketball is small and maybe shrinking. Hopefully not but it's a possibility we all need to consider. This may by why the WNBA is so cautious about expansion. As to Barnes; the dirty T has always been a huge basketball town. There's been spillover from that rabid interest starting with the fairly fast freddy Snowden days and the men really draw. Barnes really didn't have to do much other than put together a cohesive team and she's of course exceeded that and winning. Put Barnes in Tempe and she would have the same experience as Kara in NC (not that I'm arguing that ASU is the Duke of the West) and I would be stunned if she would draw more than 2000. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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