Basketball team also looks west
SEATTLE – More than 51,000 showed up to see the football team play a I-AA opponent in the fall. More than 13,000 turned out to watch Gonzaga play Oklahoma State in the same building less than two weeks ago. And last week just 1,389 people bothered to show up for a home game in Pullman.
So why not bring the Cougar basketball team to Seattle?
That’s just what Washington State is doing, starting with tonight’s “Cougar Hardwood Classic” against Utah, the first in a three-year series of non-conference home games to be moved across the mountains.
“It worked on all sides,” said Jim Sterk, WSU’s director of athletics. “I think it gives us a chance to showcase basketball to our alums and make it certainly a Cougar event where we don’t get to when we come to play the Huskies. Especially during the vacation time, our alums are over here, 60 percent of our student body I think is on the West Side.”
But even while WSU did its best to copy Gonzaga’s “Battle in Seattle” success, it’s clear that the Cougars aren’t on the same level at this point.
Having hired the same promoter, Northwest Sports & Entertainment, Inc., that handles the Gonzaga games, WSU thought it might draw well, especially given the success of the annual football game on Qwest Field.
But Rick Steltenpohl, formerly the director of Hoopfest but now a Northwest Sports employee, confirmed that just 3,500-4,000 tickets had been sold at the beginning of the week. And Sterk said he’s now hoping for a 5,000-person turnout.
Students will be allowed in KeyArena for free tonight, a potential wild card in the attendance equation.
“I don’t know if it’s tough because it is three days from Christmas,” Sterk said. “(Moving the date in the future) might be something to look at, but we’ll see how it goes (tonight) and then we’ll go from there.”
The game also has the support of head coach Dick Bennett and his players, who will be playing in front of their biggest home crowd of the year thus far despite the lagging sales.
“I think the day is coming when we’ll win a lot of those fans back,” Bennett said of the Cougar home crowds, which have averaged just more than 2,300 in six games. “I think we have more fans over there than we do on this side of the state. I had hoped that would be the case in Spokane, but that’s not the case any longer. And I would be very disappointed if we don’t get a great turnout for that game because most of them, they just love the Cougs. And they can’t see us at Washington. I expect to see a nice game.”
WSU, with a 6-2 record and winner of five of its last six, also has plenty on the line against the 6-3 Utes. This is the final non-conference game for the Cougars before opening the Pac-10 season in Spokane against Arizona in a week.
And with two more Key Arena games already in store for the future, it’ll be the Cougars’ big chance to show the other side of the state just what they can do.
“Who knows, we might bring a baseball game over some time,” Sterk said. “There are obviously reasons to bring events over and during those break periods especially. In basketball now, it gives us a good opportunity.”