Chants and crowd noise rained through the walls of Neal Fieldhouse last week as I sat behind the south basket with hundreds of other students while we cheered on the men’s basketball team to a 94-79 win over 18th-ranked Wabash College.
I played football and basketball in high school, and I played football here at DePauw, so my opportunities to be in a student section have been limited. That’s why I look forward to the Wabash basketball game every year. Once a year I get to scream my heart out and lead coordinated chants.
The game was a blast. There was energy unlike anything I have seen at a DePauw basketball game, and I have to believe it contributed slightly to the result. The men’s basketball team is surging this year, on their way to their first winning conference season since the 2014-15 season, and they fed off the crowd’s energy. DePauw’s runs seemed like they would never end and Wabash’s ended before they even started.
As I left the stadium that night, I wondered why this has to be a yearly tradition. How come we can’t have a true student section at more games as we do against Wabash once a year?
In attendance against Wabash were 1,250 people, which is the most at a home basketball game since the game against Wittenberg University on March 2, 2002. That’s awesome, and I’m not expecting for crowds of over 1,000 on a consistent basis, but the next highest attended a home game this year was 325 people against Wittenberg. We can bring in crowds over around 500 people more consistently.
I’m not perfect with this, either. I’d even consider myself part of the problem. I don’t go to every home game I can, and I certainly don’t try to set up a student section for every game.
Let’s start with women’s basketball games. We average 233 people per game this season, which is just 18 people more per game than the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) average. This is a team that has won six of the past seven NCAC championships and has won two national championships in the last 12 years, and we support them like they’ve been a slightly above average team in the conference.
Senior Maya Howard, the defending-NCAC Player of the Year, just scored her 1,455th career point, which leaves her just 25 points short of the all-time DePauw record. Howard averages 16 points per game, so there’s a chance she breaks the record on Saturday.
Saturday is Senior Day, and Howard is the only senior on the team.
Let’s bring a respectable crowd to Saturday’s game that is a worthy send-off to possibly the greatest player in the program’s decorated history. It’s the least we can do as a fan base that hasn’t supported her the way we should have the past four years.