Summit League Tournament

OldHare
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Joined: Sat May 03, 2014 10:25 am

SDSU has a big crowd advantage in Sioux Falls. USD had a good turnout as well. NDSU has a few hundred show up. There is no argument about that situation of Sioux Falls having a positive setup for fans that live in South Dakota who do attend the games. However if we look back at the conference tournament, we will see that the #1 or #2 seed has won all but one tourney going back to 1993 for the next lower seed win. 2005 found #7 seed Oakland defeating #2 seed ORU at Tulsa. I see that Western Illinois made the tourney as #2 seed in 1995 and 1996 only to lose to #1 seed Valpo. That fact of the 2 top seeds winning the tournament has more influence on the champion than the place of venue. If you have a successful conference season, it is likely you will have an elevated chance of a successful SLT. It was much like the year that WIU was the #2 seed with Clark and TP when there were many Leathernecks in the crowd. Injuries during the tournament sidelined the Leathernecks from advancing to the final game. More than 65,000 attendance is difficult for the Summit to overlook plus the more than $400,000 of corporate support for the tournament. There are also many like myself who have aid for next year's SLT tickets and there is no guarantee who will be playing in the final game or what seed my favorite team might achieve. There are 2 things we can be certain is that the tourney will be in Sioux Falls for few more years and that it is likely that the #1 or #2 seed will prevail about 12 of every 13 years.
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sealhall74
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I think each school is guaranteed 200 or 400 I assume relatively good tickets to this thing. Most are obviously "opting out" and pocketing the cash instead. Would be nice if each school would aggressively market those tickets, plan an adult bus trip, etc. The non-Dakota schools should be able to do much better than they are doing now IMO. One trip here and I think most people will be hooked on it.
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wiu712
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Western did have a student bus going to the tournament for a few years.

Adding an adult bus would bring more Western fans to the tournament.
beauspencer
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I can't see an entire bus getting filled with adults. Even if the bus started in Macomb and made stops along the way.
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ST_Lawson
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beauspencer wrote:I can't see an entire bus getting filled with adults. Even if the bus started in Macomb and made stops along the way.
I, personally, would love a bus trip up. I might actually go every so often (rather than trying to figure out how to drive the 7 1/2 hours to Sioux Falls), although you're right, don't know if an adults-only (like...non-students) bus trip from Macomb would get a ton of people.

I do remember going on one that was pretty much full...early '00s, i think...to a football game up at UNI. But I think that was the one where Scifres made the FG at the end to win the conference championship...so it was a big game anyway, plus the team had been good for quite a while, so there were a lot of fans. That probably wouldn't apply to basketball, at least not in the near future.
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