Nebrasketball: Big Ten Keeps Dominating Streak Alive

While the 2019-2020 college basketball season has been over for five long months and three even longer days, the NCAA finally released another season’s data on home attendance numbers yesterday. The data confirms that the Big Ten continues its reign at the top yet again. For the 44th straight season now the conference led the country in average home attendance. The conference also ranked No. 1 in total overall attendance with 2,999,244 fans across 236 games. The average game had 12,709 Big Ten fans in the stands for the league. The ACC came in at No. 2 in total attendance with 2,775,972 fans attending 255 games, but was No. 3 in average attendance at just 10,886 fans per game. The SEC was No. 3 in total attendance but No. 2 in average.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers finished No. 11 in average home game attendance with 15,605 fans at PBA each game on average. That’s 100.3-percent capacity per game. Within the conference pecking order, Nebraska also ranked No. 3 behind Wisconsin and Indiana.

Overall the Big Ten featured 10 schools in the top-30. The conference teams ranked the following:

• No. 6 Wisconsin Badgers
• No. 10 Indiana Hoosiers
• No. 11 Nebraska Cornhuskers
• No. 13 Maryland Terrapins
• No. 16 Purdue Boilermakers
• No. 17 Michigan State Spartans
• No. 18 Ohio State Buckeyes
• No. 24 Illinois Fighting Illini
• No. 27 Iowa Hawkeyes

The Creighton Bluejays also made the list at No. 5 nationally in average attendance with 17,314 Jayskers on average at each home game.

Nebraska also ranked No. 13 nationally for total fans attending all games: home, road, and away. A total of 418,528 fans watched Nebraska play last season. Indiana made No. 2, Wisconsin No. 6, Ohio State No. 7, Michigan State No. 10, Purdue No. 14, Maryland No. 16, Illinois No. 17, Iowa No. 20, Michigan No. 21, and Minnesota No. 26.

Nebraska did actually lead the country as No. 1 in one of the attendance numbers the NCAA tracks, and it was in the 2013-2014 season. With the upgrade to Pinnacle Bank Arena, the Huskers led the country in largest attendance increase by an average of 5,067 fans.

You can find the full attendance and capacity averages for the conference last season below:

Nebraska Women’s Basketball

The Husker women’s team ranked No. 20 in the country and No. 6 in the Big Ten with their average home game attendance number 4,397. Ahead of them were (in order of highest to lowest) Iowa (No. 10), Purdue (No. 11), Maryland (No. 15), Michigan State (No. 16), and Ohio State (No. 17). Also making the top 50 list behind Nebraska were fellow conference members Indiana (No. 23), Minnesota (No. 24), Wisconsin (No. 25), Michigan (No. 36).

Overall the Big Ten finished No. 3 in average conference attendance at 3,926, behind No. 1 SEC who averaged 4,183 attendees and No. 2 Big XII with an average crowd of 4,046.