UCI vs CSUF in BW championship

[fanblade]

8pm is the Big West championship. It is noteworthy because favorites UCSB and CSUN will be watching on ESPN2 and the 3rd and 5th seed will be playing the big game.

Fullerton hasn't been to the NCAAs in three decades.

UCI has never been to the dance.

[fanblade]

Bad news for the Big West! Championship game preempted by WAC championship in 3OT! Boise State goes on to win and stops NMST's chance at 4OTs. At least now we can say that LMU defeated a team that went to the big dance. ;D

[ldawg]

admin said:

At least now we can say that LMU defeated a team that went to the big dance. ;D

We rock.

[ldawg]

This is why LMU and the WCC needs to out recruit the pants off of the big west.

Youngman column: Historic game fails to draw big crowd
Big West title game doesn't inspire local fans.
RANDY YOUNGMAN
Register columnist

ANAHEIM- It's two hours before tipoff of the historic first Cal State Fullerton-UC Irvine title-game showdown in the Big West Tournament, and there is gridlock on the Santa Ana Freeway.

There's also a flashing neon sign alerting motorists that Anaheim Convention Center's parking structure is full, advising people to park instead at nearby Angel Stadium. Another first?

When the postseason tournament returned to ACC's arena in 2001 after an 18-year hiatus, conference officials wondered what the atmosphere would be like if someday two local teams met in the final with an NCAA Tournament berth on the line.

They finally found out Saturday night, but it wasn't exactly as they had envisioned or hoped.

Turns out, the traffic jam wasn't tournament-related, and the parking situation was related to the huge natural products convention in another part of the facility that ended Saturday.

Attendance at the 7,500-seat arena was announced at 4,234, an increase of about 100 from last year's Long Beach State-Cal Poly San Luis Obispo final. The student rooting sections in the corners of the lower bowl were loud and spirited, but each numbered in the hundreds, not thousands. (During the national anthem I counted 83 fans in the upper tier, which later grew but not substantially.)

During an interview at the start of the second half, Big West commissioner Dennis Farrell called it a late-arriving crowd but stopped short of calling it disappointing. “It's encouraging that we're showing growth,” he said.

Even so, why wasn't the game sold out?

Did someone forget to tell the student bodies at Fullerton (enrollment 37,000) and UCI (enrollment 27,000) their teams were playing for a rare NCAA berth? (UCI has never made it and Fullerton made it once previously, 30 years ago.)

Was the O.C. vs. O.C. matchup too unexpected? UCI, after all, was the No. 5 seed, with an RPI power ranking of 149 going into Saturday's game.

Or was it rampant apathy?

Sadly, it probably was a lack of interest among students and alumni at both schools, because these are the facts: UCI averaged 1,771 spectators in 14 home games at Bren Center this season, and Cal State Fullerton averaged 922 in 14 home games at Titan Gym.

That's a combined total of 2,693, which doesn't come close to filling 7,000 seats.

But where were the front-runners? Do they exist?

It's finals week at UCI, so maybe the campus library was full. (Somewhere, former UCI coach Bill Mulligan probably was nodding furiously.) Maybe there were a few off-campus keggers in Fullerton, a commuter school now the second-largest university in the state behind UCLA.

Whatever the reasons for the half-filled arena, excuses are flimsy. UCI is 15.5 miles from the arena and CSF is eight miles.

If two Orange County teams can't sell out a Big West Tournament title game, what's it going to take? Does CSF alumnus Kevin Costner have to screen a new film at halftime? Does UCI alumnus Jon Lovitz have to do stand-up comedy in the lobby?

The first time the ACC served as tournament site (1977-82), back in the Pacific Coast Athletic Association days, a sellout crowd of 7,433 watched Fresno State defeat Cal State Fullerton, 69-57, in the 1982 tournament championship game. That was, and still is, the tournament attendance record in Anaheim.

Since the Big West returned to Anaheim in 2001, the largest championship game crowd was 5,229 for Utah State's 65-52 victory over Pacific in 2005. (Interestingly, it took two out-of-town teams to pack the building. And Utah State was a lame duck of sorts, on its way out of the Big West to the Mountain West.)

Largest crowd for a two-game session was 5,563 for the 2005 semifinals, featuring Pacific-Cal State Northridge and Utah State-Cal State Fullerton. A similar crowd Saturday night would have been respectable. It didn't happen.

And now that the Big West is a California-only conference, it must rely on the local schools — particularly UCI, Fullerton and Long Beach State — to drum up support and sustain the tournament. It hasn't happened yet, either.

After Saturday night, a fair question is will it ever happen?

“I'd still like to think it can be done,” Farrell said.