KU’s Bill Self shocked that NW corner of Allen Fieldhouse wasn’t full for Indiana game
Some of Kansas’ basketball players were astonished to see eight to 10 rows of empty seats in the northwest rafters of Allen Fieldhouse during warmups before Saturday’s marquee Big 12/Big Ten matchup between No. 8-ranked KU and No. 14 Indiana.
“Our players said it coming in the locker room: ‘Coach, there’s nobody out there.’ I was like, ‘C’mon.’ They said, ‘No, nobody’s out there,’’’ 20th-year KU coach Bill Self said after the Jayhawks’ 84-62 victory.
Those rows of seats in the northwest corner remained empty throughout the game, though the attendance was listed at capacity (16,300) because all tickets were actually sold for the contest between the No. 1 (KU) and No. 10 (IU) winningest programs of all time.
KU is now 10-1, IU 8-3.
“The way you can tell if our building is juiced is if the corners are full,” Self said. “That’s how you tell. That’s what I always ask.”
Self asks his players and coaches, because he doesn’t enter the playing area until a couple minutes before the pre-game player introductions.
“Whenever our coaches come in (after being in the fieldhouse for warmups), I say, ‘Are the corners full?’,” Self explained. “(They’ll say) … ‘Eh, it’s getting there.’ Today it was like, ‘No, it’s bare (up there).’ I was like, ‘(Darn).’”
The northwest rafters are typically occupied by KU students, who completed finals week Friday. Kansas’ second semester begins Jan. 17.
“They (ticket officials) told me they allow for 2,500 students and based on the pickups that’s what they anticipated,” Self said, “and only 1,300 came.”
He stressed that, “The students that came were great. We didn’t have good student turnout. We had a good student crowd, but we didn’t have a good student turnout at all.”
Asked to speculate why so many students did not attend the KU-IU game, Self said: “I have no idea. Maybe they went home for break.”
Asked if he was “disappointed,” Self said: “No, our students have been unbelievable. Today the ones that showed up were unbelievable. Attendance was obviously poor from the student turnout. (There was) nobody there.”
One observer pointed out that virtually all other sections of the fieldhouse had fans crammed in tight next to one another. Except for that one section in the northwest rafters.
There also seemed to be a lot of Indiana fans in the building, definitely more than the visiting team usually has for games in Allen Fieldhouse.
“The ones (KU fans) that can’t be here … they’ll definitely put it (ticket) on the secondary market,” Self said, laughing.
This story was originally published December 17, 2022 at 2:49 PM.
