Take always from Day 1.

[JOPO]

Day 1 Attendance:

Creighton 18,525 - 100% sellout
Xavier 10,250 - 100% sellout
Providence 9568 - 77% full
Butler 9318 - 93% full
Georgetown 7,823 - 41 % full

AAC attendance from their newcomers:

Louisville at UCF - 7,094
Memphis at USF - 4,063
UCONN at Houston - 4,035 (looked more like 1-2K on TV)

Yikes! Those numbers are hideous!

[MUSeashells&Balloons]

Take away from Day 1 it will take a lot for Marquette to become a NCAA tournament team.

[Bluejay]

Wish we had such a schedule maker! We never seem to luck out to much in that respect. I think our scheduling "gods" have horns, a sick sense of humor and live in a rather warm climate. Lol!

Being serious for a second, I think most schools would rather have a home game while school is in session and students are in town.

Because most of the venues are public and book other events too (Creighton's arena included), I'd guess that when the league decided to have 5 games in one day, the first thing they did was see what arenas were even available and work from there. I sincerely doubt that all ten arenas were available.

[Coasterville95]

I am fully on board with the NYE Big East Tip Off Marathon every year!

I wonder if the reason the three newcomers got home games on the first day was for precisely the reason of showing off the new arenas to the rest of the Big East fans who were tuned in. I'm sure there was some level of curiosity about what the new schools bring to the table facility wise.

The fact Butler and Xavier owning their arenas surely helped.

I'm not sure I'd be laying praise to the schedule maker. Sure we start with three at home, but then we pay for it with some long droughts between home games. and as othera have noted, these three at home are during our holiday break!!! We even sold a Holiday Break package so those are general fans sitting in a lot fo the student seats right now.

Speaking as a Xavier fan, for us it IS a big step up from playing in such mega arenas as Rose Hill Gym, Tom Golas Garage (I mean Arena), Hagan Arena, and similar sized facilities at St Bonaventure and George Washington. (AT lease Dusquene started taking us to CONSOL instead of using their small on camous facility) Oh, and we have had years where we thought the schedule maker had a sick sadistic sense of humor -@ Fordham on Thursday followed by @St Louis Saturday?

[JOPO]

Wish we had such a schedule maker! We never seem to luck out to much in that respect. I think our scheduling "gods" have horns, a sick sense of humor and live in a rather warm climate. Lol!

Being serious for a second, I think most schools would rather have a home game while school is in session and students are in town.

Because most of the venues are public and book other events too (Creighton's arena included), I'd guess that when the league decided to have 5 games in one day, the first thing they did was see what arenas were even available and work from there. I sincerely doubt that all ten arenas were available.

Very good point about the holidays. Road games when the students are away anyway are much better.

[stever20]

Like I said before I don't think for a second that NYE will be the date for the marathon if they do it again. 8/12 years NYE will be the semifinals for football. Fox isn't going to want to bury that programming on a day like that. The other 4 years it'll still have the top non playoff bowls that day. So I just don't see it at all.

[Friarfan2]

Why not run the marathon on new year's eve day? Just because there is football on?

Are you going to not schedule any games for fear of competing with college football?

Run the marathon on new year's eve again. Those that want to watch will. Its not like this was our conference tournament, it was just one of many days of basketball. Great way for the fans to get pumped. Not a huge investment either, the games are going to be played anyway.

[stever20]

Why not run the marathon on new year's eve day? Just because there is football on?

Are you going to not schedule any games for fear of competing with college football?

Run the marathon on new year's eve again. Those that want to watch will. Its not like this was our conference tournament, it was just one of many days of basketball. Great way for the fans to get pumped. Not a huge investment either, the games are going to be played anyway.

I don't think you realize how big New Years Eve is going to get with college football. Especially in 8/12 years- it's going to be 100% bigger than even yesterday. You can act like college football doesn't matter, but the fact is it does. Why bury games going up against it when they could do it 1 day earlier and have great results. It actually would be better- folks would be able to enjoy especially the 10pm game not going up against the Ball Drop. What made Tuesday special was it was the first day of games, not that it was on New Years Eve.

[Edrick]

Take away from Day 1 it will take a lot for Marquette to become a NCAA tournament team.

That's pretty much out of the realm of reasonable discussion at this point. Marquette and the NCAA Tournament, I'd imagine, is down in the single digits for probability at this point.

[stever20]

Take away from Day 1 it will take a lot for Marquette to become a NCAA tournament team.

That's pretty much out of the realm of reasonable discussion at this point. Marquette and the NCAA Tournament, I'd imagine, is down in the single digits for probability at this point.

If Marquette started playing like Marquette they would have a shot. But there's no indication that will happen at all.