Gopher men’s basketball season ticket sales to the general public, faculty and students will show a small increase for the coming season. A marketing and ticket spokesman reported earlier this week that the public/faculty sale is near 10,000 (about 9,000 last season) and a student sale of 2,000 (up from 1,400) is expected.
Particularly sales to the public may increase between now and early November when Tubby Smith’s team plays its exhibition games against Minnesota State and Southwest Minnesota State. A total season ticket count of 12,000 or more creates the potential through single game sales for selling out some or all of the Big Ten Conference games that begin January. It’s possible all nine home conference games will be sold out in Williams Arena (capacity 14,625) before January 1.
Smith’s arrival last March as the new Gopher coach is responsible for the mild upturn in interest. Years ago Gopher basketball, fueled by talented players and an electric atmosphere in Williams Arena, was considered by many sports fans to be the “best show in town.” However, passion has been declining for 10 years, damaged by the Clem Haskins scandal and devastated by the failed Dan Monson coaching era.
A rightfully skeptical public has an eye toward Smith but isn’t necessarily ready to buy tickets in Williams Arena (please, don’t call it the “Barn”). Last Friday an event branded “Tubby’s Tipoff” was a free invitation to have an early look at Smith and the Gophers. While there were reports of 5,000 people attending, a Williams Arena regular for years reported about 2,500 to Sports Headliners.
Smith, a genuinely nice man, was shaking hands with people and even did a celebratory dance, according to my source. He didn’t predict a championship but said the coming season will offer fun.
If Smith needed any reminders after spending several months in Minnesota that he no longer was coaching at basketball-crazy Kentucky, he certainly could see as much last Friday night. On the same evening in Lexington a near capacity crowd of more than 23,000 attended a Wildcat practice and promotion similar to Tubby’s, according to reports. The folks in Kentucky, who expect nothing less than national championships, are excited about new coach Billy Gillispie.
Smith’s impressive resume includes being named national Coach of the Year three times. His only national championship, though, was in 1998 and in three of the last four years Kentucky was eliminated in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Answers as to how Smith, 56, will do here are coming soon. By next spring we’ll have a report card on how effectively he coached pretty much the same bunch of Gophers who lost their last nine games last season, finished 9-22 overall, 3-13 in the Big Ten Conference (10th place). A lot more will be known, too, about how effective Smith and his staff recruit, with the class of 2008-2009 expected to include high school and junior college players.
This may never be Kentucky (seven NCAA titles) but a lot of down trodden Gopher basketball fans just hope it can be like the 1970s and 1980s when Minnesota was winning conference basketball championships and entertaining with some of the better players in the country.