We played a preseason game (intra-squad scrimmage?) there once while I was in the band, and it sure felt smaller than that.

There is room for about 1,200 in upper hickey and it obviously lacks the infrastructure necessary for even D3 competition at this point. We’re dancing around the same issue here and with football. The issue is money. The money is not coming from donors so either the university takes a massive step forward in its prioritization of MBB and FB or it is heading into a suicide mission in the MWC.

What infrastructure does the Pavilion lack?

Upper Hickey Gym used to be larger - they added in two floors of offices on one end in the mid 80s. I'm told for big games, they set up a video screen in Lower Hickey for the overflow crowd.

TV lighting, replay, scoreboards, and the wiring to broadcast a game. At least that’s to start. It’s a much longer list.

UCD did agree to increase funding in MBB as part of the deal/membership agreement to join MWC.
“ * UC Davis agreed to increase its annual men's basketball expenses to certain financial levels in 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29; those specific benchmarks were redacted; UC Davis spent $2,823,059 on men's basketball in fiscal year 2023; comparatively, Nevada's men's basketball budget in 2023 was $4,978,558; the MW's lowest figure was San Jose State at $3,254,424, more than $430,000 higher than that of UC Davis

* UC Davis agreed to spend a minimum figure in men's basketball game guarantees for "winnable home games;" that benchmark was redacted”

https://nevadasportsnet.com/newsletter-daily/details-from-uc-davis-heavily-redacted-membership-agreement-to-join-the-mountain-west

I think we will likely start at SJSU level and hopefully go up to at least to Nevada level.

With this I also hope we do some improvement to the University Credit Union Center (Rec Hall/Pavilion), including better seating (especially getting rid of the huge gaps to upper levels sections), getting rid of the hanging dividers and putting a hanging scoreboard, improved walkways, improved bathroom and food.

I remember the game where Mark Ford was pushed into the bleachers by Hayward State,'s #13
Aggie fans booed him right out of the game

I remember that one of the Band's signature numbers with the song girls was "The Stripper" - a New Orleans style jazz/honky-tonk instrumental with prominent trombone slides written by David Ross (1958). It was really well choreographed and very popular. Not sure it would play as well now. LOL
But the choreography was no more suggestive - and probably less so - than some of the dance team / cheer squadl / Majorette routines.

In the 1968-69 basketball season, the song girls were particularly attractive and at one home game, the fans for the opposing team yelled, "send us your song girls."

The number that Davis has agreed to fund is pretty well known and it is both too small and too late. See Plough’s comments on football funding. If they want to do this they have to do it now and the university needs to make it happen. Limping up another level is a suicide mission and a blueprint for dropping football and crawling back to the Big West for everything else.

Why the panic to join FBS?

That’s not what I’m saying. History has shown that moving up with a plan to phase your way into a competitive level of funding after the move is a losing strategy. Davis needs to get up to the next level of funding in football and basketball before the move, not after.

UCSD has a basketball GM and together with UCI is light years ahead of Davis in recruiting and funding NIL. It’s no accident that they’re winning and students are engaged in hoops.

The schedule this year is helping build interest. We play at home tonight for the first time in a month. So much for bounding off a great last minute win! Last Saturday hind game? January 11! So, we’ll go a month between Saturday home games.

Throw in the rain and it’s probably not a great turnout. Let me guess….midterms week?!?!

I'm not sure UCSD & UCI are apt comparisons. Neither of those campuses ever had a football program, so there's been a focus on men's basketball as the flagship sport since the beginning. That's a huge difference! Football can be a revenue generating or even a profitable sport that helps fund the entire program. But it's also a sport that demands a huge allocation of resources up front (money, media, energy, etc.), regardless of whether it's successful. Those campuses have always been able to focus those resources on basketball, particularly men's basketball.

it's also not clear that the students at UCSD or UCI are "engaged in hoops", per se, despite both schools having solid programs. There's a significant difference in the attendance at UCD MBB games and the attendance at MBB games at those campuses, but not so much on the women's side. And there's no breakdowns anywhere of what percentage of any school's attendance is students.

I do agree that there will need to be some changes in the structure within athletic departments going forward. The GM model seems to be the way that most schools are going, at least for now. How schools manage that will be interesting to follow. And doesn't the agreement with the MW stipulates that investment in the men's and women's basketball programs be at an increased level by the time we are members? That would seem to indicate that there's a plan in place to do that. I know that on the women's side, UCD has gone from a 4 person coaching staff to a 6 person staff just this season.

I was surprised to see UCSD is averaging only 2000 fans per game and that’s padded a bit by the 4000 they announced for ESPN game vs Irvine.

Irvine is drawling a very healthy 2800 per game. I would imagine that’s second in the BWC after Hawaii.

We are at 1500

I've always believed that a good basketball program is the result of great coaching. Some good examples are Gonzaga most recently and historically going as far back as John Wooden and Coach K. Both UCLA and Duke had not been all that successful prior to those coaches arriving. Ditto, Arizona with Lute Olsen. Those school$ have built on the legacie$ created by those coache$, very much based on fan and alumni support once they started winning. As much as I think highly of Jim Les, both UCI and UCSD have the best coaches in the Big West. I agree with TR67 on the fact that those schools have no football.

st Mary’s took off when they dropped football and focused on basketball. Randy Bennett and the Aussie pipeline really propelled them!

St Mary’s has a pipeline to some of best players in Australia too. I’d like to see us recruiting there as well.

It would be nice to see Les and the coaches hit the fraternities or dorms to try to drum up some fan support. They could bring pizzas and give a quick talk about wanting to see them come out and support the team.

I agree that the way to a college student's heart is through his/her stomach. LOL At least it was in my day - don't ask when that was!
But rather than TAKE pizzas to frats and residence halls, try FEEDING students at the game or for attending the game. If you take them the pizzas, they've got the goodies without doing anything.
Instead, if the first 300 (or whatever number) students through the door get a $10 gift card for one of the lunch deals at Woodstocks, Pizza Guys, etc., I think that would bring students in the door. Let students with meal plans use that at the games and give them a discount for getting a meal at the game.
As long as the promo is used at both MBB and WBB games, I'd donate to a collection to fund something like that.

a few years backs, they had a night where they served the food from the dining commons and students used their cards there. Seemed like it brought in a fair number of students.

The real challenge is how do you increase the PAYING customers? When we move to the MWC and we’ll be hosting games on a wide variety of weeknights, we’re going to need a way to get more season ticket holders and walk up purchases.

I wonder how much interest will increase when UC Davis starts playing the likes of UNLV, San Jose State, Air Force and New Mexico? Would that become more of a selling point with the general public in and around Davis than Fullerton and Bakersfield?

Maybe getting consistently large, and hopefully, enthusiastic student crowds would start to make University Credit Union Center an attraction. If the game is exciting, I've noticed the crowds get into it, so that's where the "hopefully enthusiastic" comes from.

As an aside, I'd love to go back to "Pavilion" instead of "Center". University Credit Union Pavilion sounds just fine, and there's no way that "the UCUC" will ever become as catchy as "the Pav" was. IMHO.

My suggestion would be to PUSH the Flexbooks, which is what we purchase. With a FLOCK of grandkids between 3rd grade and high school, involved in youth sports and performing arts - sometimes multiple activities at a time - we can't plan to be at specific games too far in advance. The Flexbooks allow us to plan around those higher priority events. Or we can easily bring friends or neighbors if that opportunity presents itself. They're a really good deal.

I think the two Nevada schools will bring interest, especially the first couple seasons. But if we’re not competitive, that won’t last.

We’ve hosted Air Force in the past. Not a real draw. I’m not sure any of the other schools will move the needle except to that part of the public that follows college hoops on the national level.

Area ..........................Population
San Diego ................... 1,400,000
Irvine-Anaheim-Tustin .. 750,000
Irvine ...............................314,000
Davis-Dxn-Woodland .....145,000
Davis .................................65,000

UCI has the Irvine Company... we have... Woodstock Pizza.

Enthusiasm for football should help hoops attendance. I used UCSD and UCI as examples for a reason. If UCI, which has always been a heavy commuter school, has a budget 50% more than Davis for MBB that seems like a problem. Similarly, this board likes to reference the student demo for lack of interest in sports. UCSD was a high academic D3 program about 7 minutes ago and had the foresight to make sure that when they moved up the program had the resources to compete immediately. They funded at well above the CCAA levels and were dominating that level when they moved up.

So UCI gets the benefit of people that live an hour away on game night but Davis isn’t part of the Sacramento market? The size of the metro area is really not a limitation to this equation. Consistent attendance of 3,000 would be perfectly reasonable for where the program is currently situated. There are 30k students and not 1k of them regularly attend basketball games. Attendance and the in game production are worse than the end of the D2 era. You have to ask why and what can be done to fix this. The administration got really lazy with the D1 move and assumed that more support would materialize naturally from the BWC schedule. The AD and Mrak have a new group of leaders and they are falling into the same trap.

Can a market be described only by proximal demographics? I don't know, just looked at these college towns:
Pullman 32,901
Laramie 31,407
Corvallis 61,087
Provo 113,343
DeKalb 40,290 (Northern Illinois U.)

What is money always the go to? What are ICA staff doing?

This might not to relevant to the ‘will more recognized schools up out attendance ’ but here goes: Cal’s attendance went from 4600 in their last Pac12 year to 3800 in their first ACC year. Part of that is NOT getting UNC or Duke at home, the other part is losing USC/UCLA/Arizona as attractive games. I’m sure the Cal AD’s aren’t excited about that.

Again, for us it’s a move up in conference status, but still not sure that brings out fans from Woodland on a Tuesday night.

Extremely relevant! Cal was averaging 10k per game a decade ago. They just had 3k for Florida State. There was a shift in athletic spend at Cal and Stanford to de-emphasize football and basketball that played a big part in the failed Pac 12 media deal, the LA schools leaving and the conference falling apart. Davis has been doing many of the same dumb things as Cal.