IU Fans Need To Do A Better Job Supporting Women's Basketball Amongst Other Sports When They Are Not National Championship Contenders

While Men's Basketball Enjoys Support Regardless Of Success For Better Or Worse, The Rest Of Indiana's Teams Are Ignored To Often If Not Top Squads

Assembly Hall In Bloomington Where Indiana Played USC On Sunday

Bloomington-No Mackenzie Holmes. No contending for a Big Ten and National Championship. This is where the IU women find themselves in the 2024-2025 season.

This is not a criticism of the current team but a reality. Indeed, Indiana coach Teri Moren has done a fantastic job turning around early struggles and keeping the Hoosiers relevant. They are very much in contention for its sixth straight NCAA Tournament despite the personnel losses after a 73-66 loss where they took an elite USC squad to the limit.

Moren has built a culture that is very much based on “Doing The Work” and the sum of the whole greater than the parts. However, as a result of this, IU will not always be a national contender as has been the case the past five years.

The issue is the casual fans of the program are seemingly uninterested in a good, but not great squad and criticizing it for the slight fall-off. I take full responsibility for over-the-top criticism of Moren and the program early in the year and should have trusted her to get the results turned around. This is a right she has earned and I was guilty of not being patient and apologize for my role in it.

The issue with fan support though comes for Moren’s program and others across the board in Bloomington when solid, but not elite. The men’s program for better or worse always gets headlines. However, apathy rarely sets in which is mostly a positive despite all the criticism.

The same cannot be said for the other 23 varsity sports in the athletic department. A few will get very little attention no matter how well they do. However, most of the rest that are right below men’s basketball, enjoy some support regardless and it gets to a fever pitch when a championship is in sight.

Indeed, this is the reason I wanted to give some of these other lesser sports attention and cover them here for Assembly Call. Anyone who follows women’s basketball and the other top Hoosier sports is not the issue. Indeed, reading this article shows one has a commitment to the squads across the campus.

However, too large of a segment of the IU fan base (including several people I know) follows men’s basketball and gives the rest of the sports minimal attention except when the grass is the greenest. Part of this is the nature of the beast and any program with the history of men’s basketball will always get the most eyeballs.

However, it will be fascinating to see how the football program is supported if the likely outcome of becoming a perennial eight-win squad occurs. Will the stadium still sell out as it did this past season when the team is very good but a level below championship contention?

The history of the Bill Mallory era does not leave one optimistic that this can occur. While attendance hit new levels in the late 80s when it was a novelty, it dwindled back to half-empty in the early 90s despite being an annual bowl team.

Will the current era and a different time change this? One would hope so but the proof will need to be in the pudding.

Turning to modern times, IU baseball made an unprecedented run to the College World Series in 2013. They became the toast of the town and got unprecedented attention including nearly weekly sellouts of their 2,500-seat Bart Kaufman Field. While the squad did not keep success to this level, it has nonetheless been a postseason participant on a nearly annual basis despite not contending for championships.

The issue is attendance has dropped yearly since then and has trouble filling up now even on the nicest of days. While the number of people showing up is not in a bad place, an annual postseason contender should have zero reason to not fill a small stadium for a winning team on nice days.

Women’s basketball is in a similar spot now. While they are likely to be a yearly NCAA Tournament contender, the heights of the 2020-2024 championship potential may be over. Whether a season ticket base that now fills almost the entire lower level can maintain in this scenario, is an open question.

Past precedent says the answer is not positive. While attendance is unlikely to go back to a friends and family crowd in this scenario, it could very likely drop below what is now 10,000+ a game which is unfortunate.

Today’s crowd of 12,534 was a season high and continued a trend of every game this season having an announced crowd of at least 10,050. How many people drop season tickets though remains to be seen for a squad that likely finishes with 20 wins and out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Already today’s attendance was below a couple of sellouts and 13,000+ for similar high-profile contests when Indiana was ranked in the top-15 or better the past few seasons. This is no shot at the people who did show up who were very loud and the atmosphere was great.

Indeed USC coach Lindsay Gotlieb praised the people who were in attendance.

“What an incredible atmosphere,” Gottlieb said. “It was everything that I heard it would be. The fans here delivered.”

Moren echoed the sentiment of a great crowd.

“Really grateful that our fans came out and supported women’s basketball today,” Moren said. “As I continue to tell them they make it such a great experience for our players. The atmosphere (was) incredible.”

The quality of people there is excellent and has been all year, but the quantity has to grow if this school wants to continue to have a top women’s basketball program. More casual supporters cannot only show up during the sunniest of times and need to provide more support monetarily for both NIL and filling the stands.

More concerning if history is any indication, there will be a fair number of bandwagon supporters who lose even more interest after this solid but unspectacular year. With all this said, IU is by no means unique in its ability to get less-than-deserved crowds when good but not great.

However, I implore Indiana partisans to do a better job going forward of supporting winning teams in Bloomington that are solid but not elite. Certainly, I will be there covering all these sports for the foreseeable future as all these squads including women’s basketball deserve it.

Indiana fans are fortunate to have the culture Moren has built, and she and several other Hoosier programs deserve more support when they are a step below the top. The diehards will always be there, but to receive the maximum amount of people paying the attention that is deserved, casuals need to do a better job of giving their awareness to winning products that are not quite national contenders.

Unless this school wants to be known only for supporting its men’s basketball through thick and thin, other programs that have been far better in recent times need to see fans fill the stadiums when these winning teams are not amongst the top few in their sports. Certainly, the diehards and support in general has grown massively for a lot of these winning squads. However, it is still not enough for how well things have gone in Bloomington for the other 23 sports that did not have Bobby Knight on the sidelines at one point.

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