Idaho point guard Glen Dean poked his head into the Kibbie Dome a few times during the Vandal football team’s 52-38 loss to Old Dominion Saturday, a few hours before he would start his own season in Memorial Gym. What he saw was discouraging, to say the least.
Rows upon rows of yellow benches — but nobody to occupy them.
Having played a year of basketball in Cheney, Wash., for Eastern Washington, and another in Salt Lake City, for the University of Utah, Dean had yet to experience the unique spectacle of Memorial Gym basketball.
While Idaho crowds have dwindled in recent years, the entourage that came to support Dean and a new Idaho basketball squad was the exact kind that teams coached by Don Verlin have craved throughout his tenure.
There were 1,326 fans on hand Saturday evening — many of whom made the 100-yard trek across the SprinTurf following yet another home disaster for Paul Petrino and the football team.
Those who did make the short trip were greeted with a pleasant surprise — a 67-63 victory from a team that appeared experienced beyond its years and confident in its ability to close out late in the second half.
While the football team looks poised to finish its season with one, possibly two wins, Verlin’s team may be the real deal — if way-too-early predictions are worth anything.
But Dean and company didn’t come to Moscow to close out tight games in front of a couple hundred fans. The former Ute played at a venue that attracted 10,000-plus on a regular basis.
And a Vandal team that was often on the wrong end of five-point contests last season, certainly didn’t hear the “oohs” and “aahs” of its home crowd — at least not nearly enough as it should have.
Enter 2013 and many questions remain unanswered. One of the biggest: How will the Vandal nation populate the Cowan Spectrum a season after attendance numbers teetered on the 1,000 mark more often than not.
Maybe those suffering in the wake of another dismal football season will cure that hangover in the Cowan Spectrum, where the Vandal men play just three more non-conference games, with a legitimate shot to win all three.
Or maybe not.
Idaho averaged just more than 1,000 fans in home games last year. Only two other WAC teams drew less than 1,500 to games and three averaged more than 5,000.
Certainly, there is a correlation between programs with strong tradition of trips to the Big Dance — Utah State and New Mexico State to name a couple — and attendance numbers.
But for Idaho, a team that’s been consistently above average since Verlin arrived, the win-loss tally has yet to translate to electric Spectrum atmospheres.
The 2013 Vandals look promising. But don’t think they’ll hit the heights that they’re capable of reaching without 1,500-plus at the 12 remaining home games.
Theo Lawson can be reached at [email protected]