Originally Posted by
HerdBot
I think the SHAC would be slightly below average by MVC standards but it's absolutely adequate. I think places like the Illinois State and Southern Illinois have huge arenas with so much character. Just cool looking places but they really don't draw THAT MUCH BETTER if you remove Witchita.
The Knapp Center for Drake is OK but not amazing. The McLeod Center (although an insane atmosphere) for UNI only holds 6600 and is actually a pretty basic looking place place.
If anything the SHAC will probably have as nice of amenities if not nicer than other teams with the new Basketball practice facility, locker rooms, weight room, nutrition bar, etc.
In terms of attendance, if you take Wichita out of the equation, we're in the same ballpark already. With the new arena we would certainly see a massive jump on just that alone. Heck both NDSU and SDSU have the potential to be at the top of the attendance list. The last few years are attendance numbers are misleading because we played in an off campus hockey arena and before that we played in the crappy BSA. Our 3-4K average would certainly go way up and we'd probably average our capacity which is almost 6K. The thing is when you play in the Summit and in a weak run down BSA, you really don't get many great games. The MVC is just loaded with great games week after week and we already play most of them in the MVFC so the rivalry's are pretty natural.
Wichita St. 15 162,088 10,805
Bradley 15 89,299 5,953
UNI 14 75,304 5,378
Southern Ill. 16 84,445 5,277
Evansville 16 82,364 5,147
Illinois St. 16 83,194 5,199
Missouri St. 15 62,106 4,140
Indiana St. 14 51,421 3,672
Drake 14 43,222 3,087
Loyola Marymount 14 31,105 2,221