TU Fans Staying Away

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Was 1993-2003 an anomaly?

A phenomenal fluke?

Or was the University of Tulsa’s 1993-2003 basketball success a fair standard against which Frank Haith’s program should be measured today?


For Monday’s renewal of the Oral Roberts-TU Mayor’s Cup series — for a contest won 90-71 by Junior Etou and the Golden Hurricane — fewer than half of the Reynolds Center’s 8,355 seats were occupied.

Most of today’s players were toddlers when the Reynolds Center really rocked — when in 1998-2003 there were sellouts for 35 of the first 75 games played in TU’s beautiful gym.

In 223 games since, as the Tulsa program withered to a level of relative mediocrity, there were only six sellouts.

For Haith’s 100th game as the Hurricane head coach, the announced attendance on Monday was 4,437.

The actual attendance was about 3,500

- Tulsa World.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Love that POS publication.

 

[Gold*]

Funny, I didn’t see Scoop at the game.

 

[goldenhurricane2]

The perception of Tulsa basketball changed... reading the comments in the Tulsa World and comments left under Tulsa World articles on twitter would leave someone unfamiliar with the program thinking TU was in the same league as oru... It seems that it doesn’t really matter that our conference could very well produce a national champion, send 4-5 teams to the NCAA tournament, and provide some very high level hoops. Tulsans simply use the excuse that it’s not OU or osu (even when they both suck)... I know the thunder has some role in all this, but I can’t bring myself to put too much blame on them.

While it will be easier to fill the Reynolds Center than it is to fill Chapman stadium, we will still struggle with a perception issue in Tulsa... our own community views us as small potatoes. And until that changes, we’ll continue to have a half full arena (unless another team like WSU brings a bunch of fans).

Having hatchet jobs from the Tulsa World doesn’t help either... Kelly has done a good job for us as of late, but it seems like every month or two one of the other sports writers will do an opinion piece that just makes TU look or sound small time... Do you think the media in Memphis, Wichita, Cincinnati, Orlando, and so on do the same to their city schools? Nope... they don’t, because I’ve read their publications. They treat them virtually the same as the big12, big10, and SEC schools in their states.

It’s really unfortunate that TU is portrayed the way we are by the media in town... a thriving TU only brings positives to the city. Imagine what it would look like if TU sold out (or came close to selling out) most of our football and basketball games - not only would that be great for the university but that would also be great for all the businesses in the area from a uptick in traffic. Restaurants, hotels, and shops would almost assuredly see an increase if 11th and Harvard was a destination for high level D1 sports on Saturdays in the fall and a couple of times per week in the late fall and winter.

I’ll end my rant now... I know everyone here already knows this, but sometimes I just get so damn frustrated with how TU is viewed by a lot outside the university community as well as some within the university community.

 

[cmullinsTU]

Tulsa World is poor and coverage on radio for the ORU game was nonexistent.

When plank ran the buzz he’d spend an hour or two talking TU/ORU game. Granted they’d spend a large part of the time making fun of the fact neither school was texting or tweeting questions.

If we ever reach the level of basketball we were at in the 90s the crowd will follow. I’m confident in that.

Also on poor attendance for the game, normally there’s a thousand or two ORU fans. Monday, I’d guess there were 200-300 tops with less than 20 ORU students scattered around the arena.

 

[cmullinsTU]

Also, I was a student for basically the entire Wojcik era. Attendance then wasn’t better than today. Big games got bigger turnouts but in general it was similar, so I don’t think the Thunder impacts us like it does OU.

 

[noble cane]

Score 100 points a game and provide ESPN worthy highlights and the fans will return.

The Thunder play a bigger role than you would think.

OU is scoring over 100 points in its first games. The TV down here has been full of OU and OSU fast break dunks. That’s what fans want to see.

Norman is prepping to build a new Arena for OU to improve the fan experience and make it more like going to Thunder games. Fans are wanting that “big time” environment.

 

[noble cane]

Was 1993-2003 an anomaly?

A phenomenal fluke?

- Tulsa World.

Not a fluke. Just the perfect example of what can happen when the right hires are made.

We wasted good money on bad hires and didn’t pony up when we made good ones.

 

[chito_and_leon]

There's hasn't been anything particularly interesting about TU basketball for a long time. We've had mediocre or below teams with no stars or interesting personalities and the teams have been pretty vanilla. The Wojick era couldn't help - 7 years of average teams playing boring basketball with a prick for a coach. You gotta be serious about TU to go to those games.

Hopefully someone like Joiner can give us some star power and improve the quality of results too.

 

[TU_BLA]

There's hasn't been anything particularly interesting about TU basketball for a long time. We've had mediocre or below teams with no stars or interesting personalities and the teams have been pretty vanilla. The Wojick era couldn't help - 7 years of average teams playing boring basketball with a prick for a coach. You gotta be serious about TU to go to those games.

Hopefully someone like Joiner can give us some star power and improve the quality of results too.

TU tried to pony up to keep both Tubby and Self. Tubby actually ppd his leaving for a P5 program a year. Self declined Nebraska and was set to stay...then Lon Kruger screwed us and took the Atlanta Hawks job. You weren't going to get Self to turn down that job as well.

I didn't like the Buzz hire...would have much rather kept Billy Clyde around and maybe then his life and TU basketball wouldn't have ended up so screwed up like it did.