Okoro Dude
Senior
Posts: 309
Loc: Glen Mills, PA
Reg: 11-24-04
|
03-13-17 02:17 PM - Post#226767
In response to Stuart Suss
Stu,
Having met you many times and enjoyed your commitment to the team over the years, I wish I could agree with you about the tournament. I attended all of the games except for the last women's semi-final and thoroughly enjoyed it.
1) Regular season was far more interesting for both players and fans as they fought in second half of season to get in to the tournament. Don't know why you would begrudge the team the joy they felt beating Harvard last Saturday and the chance to play past the end of the regular season instead of one more boring non-conference game against (pick one - Lehigh, Colgate, Howard, Delaware St, Monmouth, Rider . . .) I'll take the third game with Princeton any day.
2) Quality of the games (particularly Saturday) was tremendous - really showcased the young talent this league has
3) Crowd seemed very good. While I will acknowledge that many Penn/Princeton fans left - those who estimated only about 2,000 for Harvard/Yale were smoking crack - it was more than that and the second half had a great atmosphere as you don't need a full house at Palestra to make it noisy and fun.
4) While no one can expect the women's games to draw much when they are on either end of a 4-game day or two hours after the conclusion of the men's championships, I thought they got more attention and focus than they would have ever gotten had it been a separate (or no) tournament. Kudos for the league putting an emphasis on inclusion and (relative) equality for the women's teams.
In terms of problems:
1) I do think they outpriced the event and underpublicized by selling it by themselves. Pricing a bit lower and allowing a Ticketmaster to promote would have filled the building as more Big 5 "locals" without a dog in the fight would have come to see the good basketball.
2) Spring Break timing with no students does suck (though I am not sure how many would come if they weren't on break - seems like that day has come and gone for Penn and Princeton at least).
3) Not sustainable to give Penn home court every year, but I can't see the tournament succeeding in another building to be honest. Combo of locating in big city, room enough to host all the fans, atmosphere, etc. isn't easily solved anywhere else. Other alternative is home games at higher seeds and those tournaments aren't really tournaments at all in any real sense.
|
