GU women out-draw WCC men except for Zags

There was a lot of women’s basketball news on Saturday , including wins by Gonzaga, Idaho and Eastern Washington and a good second half from Washington State, plus some outstanding games by local products. In particular, note the Montana State-Montana game and how rare a Bobcat win in Missoula was until last year. Last year’s win in Missoula was a career highlight for Lewis and Clark graduate Lyndi Seidensticker and that was before she had a big game this year.

But as I wait for a couple of ACC upsets or comebacks so I can do my weekly Top 25, I wanted to touch on a subject a Gonzaga fan asked about a couple days ago. Read on.

The question was if the Gonzaga women out-drew the men’s teams from the rest of the West Coast Conference. I figured more than most but I don’t really track the men’s side.

But since I was asked - and I was taking a busman’s holiday, watching the Zags pound San Francisco before I headed to a hockey game - I decided to look it up.

The answer is yes.

Amazing.

I used attendance figures before this weekend, before the GU men hit the road for the first time in leaguea so a couple of WCC teams could get their Zag boost to pad their numbers and before the GU women played at home to get the advantage of two home games.

The Gonzaga women average 3,458 , a number that will go up slightly after the first weekend of home games against two of the lower division league teams. What is impressive about that is the Thursday crowd of more than 3,000 despite the game being on TV and the GU men on TV at the same time. The 4,000-plus Saturday afternoon for the cellar-dwelling Dons was No. 6 in school history … and the three biggest league draws, Portland, St. Mary’s and LMU are ahead along with Senior night.

The best-of-the-rest in the WCC men is St. Mary’s at 3,106 . The average for WCC men, including Gonzaga’s nightly 6,000, is 2,595 . Only the GU women’s smallest crowd of the season 2,538 for Southern Utah, is smaller than the WCC men’s average.

This really isn’t about the men, some could maybe draw more if their gyms were bigger. It’s really just about what’s going on with the Gonzaga women.

The average for the other seven WCC women’s teams combined is 4,433 . The women’s average is 852 and the No. 2 average is San Francisco at 689 .

One last point, the women get their average despite only about 200 students attending the games while the men get a couple thousand. Not sure why the students don’t attend. It’s not about winning. Gonzaga just graduated the most prolific scorer in league and school history in Heather Bowman and time is running out the seem the most prolific passer in league and school history in Courtney Vandersloot.

Anyway, a tip of the hat to Gonzaga women’s basketball and their fans.

About that vote: