ahunte1 wrote:
Bona brought a ton of students, which was cool. Doubt we'll be able to do that unfortunately
I'm a Bonnie. Our fan base has been described as "a cult, but in a good way." We had a lack-luster showing in the A-10 tourney crowd because the expectations for this season were so high and the mid-Dec to mid-Jan injuries and performance just kicked us in the nutz. (I now have this next weekend off from work, because I requested it off in October when I expected to follow the Bonnies around for two weeks, I didn't go to A-10 because I was saving my money).
There are A-10 fan bases who always show (Dayton, VCU) and two fanbases who can match in good times (Bona, Davidson), but it's just really hard for Bona/DC to look impressive when they have such a small alumni base.
They are bottom 10 in Division I in enrollment. I went to the 2018 NCAA Tourney in Dallas (watching you guys beat Miami from an airport bar on my connecting). I got to the arena, and we had 4000 fans in the place going crazy and yelling their faces off. We had a louder and better crowd than Florida; Florida's enrollment (59,000) was far larger than our total living alumni (29,000).
When you see A-10 crowds, remember that St. Bonaventure and Davidson have 2,000 students. We are freaking tiny. But our attendance is double our enrollment. I'm not trying to talk trash at all, I really respect you guys and love that we got you into our league because you help us; I'm just saying, you average 3,200 fans for a campus of 12,000 under, 16,000 total in a market of 9,618,502 people. St. Bonaventure averages just under 4,000 a game, with an enrollment of 1850, and a market of 24,000 people.
But again, I hope you beat Ohio State by 90.
To give you some background on Loyola...while we have strong basketball history, there was about a 25-year period where Loyola basketball was irrelevant even on campus (including when I played). The school was very much a commuter school and was on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 2000s. They got out of the financial issues through a plan of massive enrollment expansion and campus redevelopment. The last phase of that plan was investing more heavily in sports, which began right before we entered the Valley around 10 years ago.
I say all that to say there is a huge missing age bracket in our fan base. The alumni who remember the glory days of the 60s are largely the ones who funded a lot of the new athletic buildings, and many of the current students go to Loyola in part bc of the basketball team's success. However, the alumni from the 90s and 00s did not experience any school pride in athletics during our time there, and a huge percentage were commuters.
The Loyola that the A-10 is getting is a very large private school with an awesome campus and in a great financial situation. Loyola now owns basically the entire thriving neighborhood around campus and some prime real estate downtown. Our athletic facilities are incredible for the mid-major level, and the fan base will grow exponentially (compared to what it has been) as we move forward.