Biggest crowd @ a college basketball game in the state of Wisconsin!!!!

[MUVOL06]

Who cares that Tom Crean "markets" his team.  It is good for the program in general. While I agree that he should not slack on his coaching of x's and o's,  the guy has made a few NCAA tournaments in his day so I don't think that is a problem.  MU should be proud that it had the largest crowd in the state ever @ a basketball game.  Think about how much that affects recruiting.  What 18 yr old kid wouldn't want to play in front of a pack gym and on TV.  If the Bradley Center would allow, im sure they would try to fit more people into the stadium.  The energy the fans bring is amazing, the more people in the stadium, the better the home-court advantage.  Yes MU has only won 2 conference championships, but lets be realistic here.  The Big East is a HARD conference to win...for every team.  If MU had stayed in CUSA they easily would have challenged with Memphis for the title every year.  The challenge and exposure the Big East brings is much more important right now then winning conference championships. 

To make a connection here... the marketing concerns do not make sense to me.  Why are people worried about Crean marketing himself and the team?  In my experience with TN, Bruce Pearl has marketed his team to the max.  He paints his chest, he announced a game for the Lady Vols.  He wears an orange blazer against Kentucky and Vanderbilt.  He helped in the studio for CBS after UT was eliminated from the tournament last year.   Yes he markets himself, but he is also marketing his team.  His stunts are comical and people mock him, but they talk about UT when they talk about him.  Pearl will do anything and everything to keep his team in the national media.  What you people don't realize is that the coach is truly the only one who can be marketed.  Kids come and go, recruiting classes exhaust their eligibility and graduate or go pro.  But Crean, and Pearl, are consistently the image of their programs.  I say Crean should continue to do what he is doing, maybe even push harder for attention because great basketball players are everywhere.  The only way a kid from the middle of nowhere Oregon can see MU, is through the marketing of Crean and the TV games that MU plays.   If these kids see how hard Crean pushes to make MU basketball relevant, they can see the type of guy who is really behind his players and school.  It attracts recruits.  It is great for the school.

[MUVOL06]

Before people jump all over me, let me be clear on the winning conference championships.  I have stated before that winning championships is the only thing that matters.  I still believe this.  But MU, when they came into the BE, and even this year is not especially suited to win the BE without a few breaks, they just are not good enough to win it themselves.  They will need to play outstanding against teams like Gtown, Pitt, and UCONN to win games due to their lack of big men. They are good enough to finish in the top 4, but not good enough to be the clear favorite in any season.   This is where the marketing is important.  Its also why I say the BE exposure is more important for MU right now.  This comment may shock a lot of you, but the reality is that the majority of the country could not locate Marquette on a national map. I know this because I have lived outside the state for a long time, in various regions of the country.  While I was irritated at first by this, I have come to accept this as a reality.  The more exposure the team (and the school) gets from being in the big east and Crean marketing the basketball team really helps the MU community.  The basketball team can recruit more players who are elite, thus resulting in more marketing and exposure.  Correct me if Im wrong, but, didn't MU (the school) have its highest enrollment in years the schoolyear following the final four.  This was also the season where MU had the most exposure.  So you can see how the exposure helps everyone from basketball to the school in general.

[mu_hilltopper]

The wiki has the stats, btw:

http://wiki.muscoop.com/doku.php/men_s_basketball/season_by_season_attendance

[MUVOL06]

So 2004-2005 wasn't necessarily a great year for MU, but i think the stats go deeper than the chart for attendance.  MU was 18-11 that year, their final one in CUSA.  The low attendance number may be related to the fact that MU did not play many good home games that year.  Wisc, Arizona, and Louisville is about it.  Somehow they managed to play Cincy once -away. CUSA was not very good that year, so the amount of hyped games was much less in years previous, and the years of the BE where the majority of games are Prime-Time events..  Other factors go into attendance other than MU's performance, a weaker conference and less big-time games is probably the cause of that year( which in fact) would hurt Creans overall attendance numbers.

[Marquette84]

What bothers me and others is he seems to be more preoccupied with marketing than Xs & Os. 

Just out of curiosity, on a percentage basis how much of Crean's time do you think he spends preoccupied with marketing?