Not to attack the OP but I'm sure this same sort of question gets asked ad infinitum every time there's a change in college hoops (three point line, one and dones, etc).
You didn't see fans out for Cuse-Pitt because those teams suck. Watch a game between two teams that don't suck and there are rabid student sections and raucous crowds. There aren't many teams at all beyond the blue bloods of the sport who are going to draw huge crowds with bad teams. The same is true in any other sport.
Basketball at UConn hasn't felt the same because we were barely starting to crawl back into relevance after the KO debacle when Covid hit, which robbed us of a few great home crowds and put a damper even now on attendance, etc. But let's not extrapolate from "no fans watching terrible teams and UConn doesn't seem the same" into "the sky is falling for college bball".
No one is going to stop watching because the kids are finally making a little money. College basketball will be fine.
