I can only speak for myself, but I'm just not that into the sport of basketball if I'm being totally honest. I will always hope for the Aggies to succeed and I think that the new move to the MW is exciting, but especially as an east coast fan it's tough for me to dedicate the time and late nights to watch the games for a sport I don't love.

I enjoy MBB and my wife and I are season ticket holders. But most of the time I’m not knowledgable enough on BB strategy to make meaningful posts. So i read but limit my posts.

I think this is about par for the course although this year’s football success brought out a bunch more new posters.

As an alum who lives out-of-state, it is far easier to follow football. It is only played once a week, and FCS games are almost always on Saturdays. I really love baseball and football but basketball is just very casual to me. It's not something I follow that closely.

In prior years I was eager to stream Davis basketball games but haven't watched more than parts of a couple games this year. I am frustrated with just more of the same in terms of big expectations each year and then poor performance. I am sick of the guard oriented offense with almost no easier shots in the paint. I often hear from other coaches how well coached our team is, but then CSUN and Riverside leap frog us from the depths of the Big West. How does that happen if we have such a great coach? Is this just the cycles of a mediocre Big West conference? Will the MWC be a bigger conference draw for athletes? I don't think those teams are any better at basketball than our teams.

I like Les' obvious competitive nature, but don't like his anger or offensive scheme. I wouldn't mind trying a new coach.

Mediocre on the court coupled with butchering the rec hall, killing the band-uh, which was the energy behind the program, and discontinuing the Aggie Pack freshman programs out of laziness. Moving to the MWC does nothing to fix any of this and triples the operating cost.

Guess we can't complain about the students not showing up. They likely have some of the same reasons.

I used to post a lot more about both men’s and women’s bball. I still follow and will be going to Henderson for the BW tourney but I’ve just run out of steam to post often. It might have something to do with the kind of boring (for lack of a better term) nature of both teams. I was hoping we’d see mor run and gun from the men and better shooting from the women. Maybe now that we are heading into the final stretch my excitement will pick up.

Looking back over the years, our attendance was typically in the 1700/game range pre-pandemic; the past couple years were down in the 1300 range. 2014-15 was the outlier year when attendence was around 2500/game. That was the conference title team and we had 3 huge attended games (ESPNU vs Poly that drew 5300, ESPNU vs LBSU that drew 5300 and season ender vs Irvine that drew 4400).

Student turnout hasn't changed much over the past 10 or so years that I have been regularly attending. They fill the section up on a regular basis once the season rolls into January. Those ESPN games were always a big draw but those aren't happening anymore. Also, the band turnout this year has been bigger in number and in participation than it has for many years. It seems like the pandemic years took alot of steam away from the program.

It seems like the pandemic years took alot of steam away from the program.

Aggie Band-uh! was replaced by the UCD Marching Band, as well. Organization is still recovering/adapting to that major change.

Thanks for all of the interesting responses. My hunch that interest is down seems valid.

I’ll keep an eye on the message board to stay updated on what’s happening.

Yeah I'm not gonna lie most of the games being on Thursdays makes it harder to go to the games in person this year. Also, Elijah Pepper was a draw IMO. I think we also are kinda in a period of new players that people are still getting used to. Most people I know went to more games last year or the year before, the reason why im not quite sure. I know that many of the people I know only really care about UC games though, not because the non-uc teams are not fun to watch, but they know people at schools like UCSB much more than csu bakersfield or northridge. I think the big west is less competitive this year with the top being so heavy.

I'm going to continue to bang the drum for a return to Friday/Saturday Mens/Womens doubleheaders. :eyes: Better for travel, better for STUDENT athletes, better for eyes on both programs, IMO.

And you all should get off my lawn, too. :)

Well, I grew up in Indiana so basketball is part of my DNA. I love the sport and my wife and I are long time season ticket holders. Football is the most popular sport in the USA and Aggie football has a long and storied history that Aggie basketball really doesn't have although winning the 1998 D2 National Championship was an incredible accomplishment.

It seems like we've kind of been stuck in neutral ever since the 2017 team went to the NCAA Tournament and we went to the NIT in 2015 and 2018. Athletics are not an easy sell with the students or with the Davis community at large either. So, unless there's something to really get excited about, like having a very high achieving team that is at the top of the conference and has good shot at post-season play, it's hard to build a bigger fan base. Football has had that kind of excitement the past few years and this year's team was the best of all so the fan base has really gone up. Not so much with basketball, unfortunately.

Jim Les and his assistant coaches are excellent and they'll need to really step up the recruiting in order to be competitive when we began play in the MWC in 2026. It appears as though we have "promised" the MWC that we are committed elevating basketball to a much more competitive level of play and I hope that that will help create more excitement and will bring in more fans. It's not going to be easy and the first couple years could be rough but, if we bring in a higher level of talent and begin winning in the MWC against higher profile teams, we have a chance to build something special here.

We've played Thursday-Saturday BWC games for as long as i can remember. That's not a change.

I agree with BGA for the most part. I do think that Les and his ACs are very good coaches. But Les’s style of play necessitates succeeding in the very difficult job of recruiting exceptional three point shooters or at least good outside shooters. I believe Les is rightly recognized as a “guards coach” and not as a big man coach. So when he has got excellent outside shooting going fo him Les’s teams are very fun to watch. If not… well not so fun. There is nothing more depressing for an Aggie fan than to see shot after shot from the three point range clang off the rim into the hands of the opposing big guy. And to make it worse bad outside shooting is contagious as the players press harder to try and make these difficult shots go in the basket. So this season we really have only TY who is a consistent three point shooter and even he has been off lately. All this makes for a reason not to go to an Aggie MBB game. Aggie WBB that is another thing. Much more fun to watch!

I was just curious about our attendance over the past dozen or so years. I got this from the NCAA site:

year average
2010 1,748
2011 1,668
2012 1,736
2013 2,027
2014 1,712
2015 2,584
2016 2,111
2017 2,178
2018 2,117
2019 1,834
2020 1,440
2021
2022 730
2023 1,248
2024 1,529

big drop in 1440 was due mostly to the preseason (we had 2 or 3 game with 600 or so fans) that wasn't very success (we lost 6 road games in a row). 2021 had no fans, and 2022 was the weird crowd restriction year. Last year, we started getting back to pre-pandemic values. We right around 1500 this year, which will probably go down after this long road trip (especially if our record isn't good).

we could really benefit from having 2-3 vocal student leaders. I noticed that UCR had several students standing in front of the student section leading cheers and that's the best student turnout i've ever seen at UCR. We need 2 Darius Livingston's out there to get the students going......rest of the fans follow suit. The band has been more and more vocal the past couple game so hopefully that builds.

Thanks. Is there any way you can get data on how many people have even accessed the Hamilton Court site since the start of basketball season?

Great job on the game previews!

Regarding site analytics, there is currently no data available on the backend. While there is an option to integrate Google Analytics, we have determined that it isn't necessary at this time, aside from general curiosity. We will keep you updated if anything changes.

I have followed basketball less and less the last few years. I moved from the East Bay to Idaho, so obviously it's much more difficult to attend games. But I haven't even watched many games either and I'm not exactly sure why.

The last game I attended was a real bummer. I went to the Big West Tourney in Vegas 2 years ago. There were probably two hundred people in the nice 6,000 seat arena- it was a sad experience, and getting blown out by Riverside didn't help. I haven't followed the Band-uh saga as close as others, but the band in Vegas seemed to be a shell of its former self. They brought zero energy to the empty arena that was in dire need of energy.

This may be a dumb idea and full disclosure, I was a lowly Poly Sci Major not some Biomedical Engineering genius but.... Could we create a scholarship for students who can increase student attendance and involvement for all our sports programs? Award 2 half scholarships or 4 quarter scholarships for student leaders who have a vision and can prove they have improved the student involvement at sporting events.

Maybe academic elites would hate that idea but an energized student section can help in so many ways. Players and other fans at games can feed off the student energy, recruits may be more likely to chose Davis if they visit and see a wild crowd supporting the team they could join. Leading to better teams, more wins, more media exposure, higher revenues, larger crowds... and the cycle repeats.

I'm dating myself but I remember the old CAAMB with fondness, although I had to admit that they did need to allow women on the band. But talk about bringing spirit to the games. In those days, all the games played when classes were in session had the old gym packed. My friends and I would show up early to get decent seats and if anyone waited until the tip-off they would be lucky to get in at all. The band was bit raunchy, but we loved it. And the other thing about the band was the quality of the music was outstanding. They had a guy who excelled at arranging the tunes. I can't remember his name, but if he didn't go into record producing he missed his calling.

Corey Hawkins effect in 2015. 25-7 and probably the best season beside the D2 NC year.
That was a fun team with Hawkins, Adenrele, Ritchart, Avery Johnson, and D. Graham. Losing to Hawaii in the BW Championship was heartbreak!
Stanford was a tough draw in the 1st round of the NIT.

On the other hand, I just noticed that activity on the WBB site is very low even though the women are 8-4 and in third place.

In the late 60s the Aggie Band was the UC Davis All Male Maverick Band, wore jeans, white shirts, and black floppy hats with all sorts of buttons on them. After the game they came down into the locker room for a march-about. LOUD! They played a lot, they had numbers with the song girls, and really made Hickey Gym rock. I remember that floor as being leg friendly without many dead spots. Not like the one at Stanford before Maples Pavilion but still good. Still used for practice.

Did you play for Ham?

I was manager with Bruce Ross '68-70

Does anyone recall the capacity of Hickey Gym? Would today’s attendance fit? That place was rocking for important games.

2,200 is what sticks in my mind

We played a preseason game (intra-squad scrimmage?) there once while I was in the band, and it sure felt smaller than that.