We have known that the target customer being families who were about to spend five of the next eight weekends (or thereabouts) on scalding lacrosse fields up and down the East Coast would increasingly choose air conditioning and sleeping in their own bed on the holiday weekend. 2012: Championship Weekend Attendance Lowest since 2002 Change Could be Comingįor more than a decade, we have known that raising ticket prices and selecting venues more geared toward hotel stays and less accommodating to big group purchases like West Islip youth lacrosse and their - at its peak - about 300 attendees would lead to a decline in ticket sales.2013: After Sixth Straight Attendance Decline, What's Next for the Final Four?.2014: What's Next for the Final Four? Lower Ticket Prices Among Changes Coming.2015: Is It Time to Change the Final Four?.2016: Attendance, Ratings, Other Indicators Reverse Championship Weekend Trends.2017: Attendance Steady at DI Championship Weekend Record Crowds for Sunday, Women.Yearįor years, one of the most read stories on examined the many reasons behind declining Final Four attendance. It’s not that I don’t care about attendance at the Final Four, it’s that I don’t believe that attendance numbers will again ever approach the heights of the late 2000s, and that the sport must move beyond “Final Four attendance” as a meaningful symbol for its popularity and commercial viability, and college lacrosse should adopt a new tournament model to take it into the future. on Sunday and Monday of Memorial Day Weekend. Bennett's and Virginia's regular season rule over the ACC and much of college basketball has created a - pardon the boilerplate buzz word, but it does apply - narrative about Virginia basketball.It’s not that I don’t care about TV ratings for the national championship games, it’s that if I were to try to pick two of the times in the entire calendar year that the fewest people in the United States would be sitting in front of the television, it would be noon and 1 p.m. Now comes the do-or-die litmus test of the NCAA Tournament. If you combine the five years prior at each of those schools before Bennett got there, the aggregate record of those programs was 126-165. It's at the core of how he's won 288 of his 406 games at Virginia and Washington State. He said a one-and-done at Virginia is defined by an opponent shooting, missing, and not getting a second chance with an offensive rebound. In fact, Bennett had a nice line on Saturday night. This is not a school that has ever, or probably will ever, win with one-and-done types. The double-dip champ run is a special thing. Harris and Anderson were at Barclays Center on Saturday, right behind the UVA bench, smiling like giddy school kids after their program completed the crown-jewel accomplishment: winning the league's regular season and tournament title. All with a Final Four to their name, all held in higher esteem because of it. Gregg Marshall, Jim Larranaga and John Beilein too. Final Four runs will do that for coaches. What you think of it, and how it's perceived nationally, is different. Without that devastating loss, Virginia's reputation is different. 1-seeded Cavaliers of 2015-16 that had a freakish collapse in the Elite Eight against Syracuse. This Cavs squad rates as the second most efficient offensive team Bennett's had, only behind that No. It's by far the best defensive team in the sport - statistically one of the best of the past 20 years - and damn good on offense, too. So, again, will you allow yourself to trust this team that's put a chokehold on college basketball? If you don't think Virginia looks special, your biases are blinding your judgment. I'm sure Bob Huggins and Buzz Williams have been bothered plenty in search of state secrets. West Virginia and Virginia Tech, congrats on somehow beating this team. The Cavaliers are a problem that seem only solvable with a lucky, blind guess. It feels inevitable that this will be the year.
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