Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

12:30PM- 2 Villanova @ Seton Hall, FOX--Gus Johnson, Donny Marshall & Lisa Byington

8:00PM- Xavier @ Marquette, CBSSN-- Carter Blackburn (play-by-play), Doug Gottlieb (analyst) and Evan Washburn (reporter)

Seton Hall will easily crush its Prudential Center attendance record tomorrow night. With 3/4 of the top opened up and only a handful of seats left available, a crowd of about 16,000 (or more than 4x the crowd for Wed vs Creighton) is expected. It's a sellout of the seats that were made available.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this one.

Hall2012 wrote:Seton Hall will easily crush its Prudential Center attendance record tomorrow night. With 3/4 of the top opened up and only a handful of seats left available, a crowd of about 16,000 (or more than 4x the crowd for Wed vs Creighton) is expected. It's a sellout of the seats that were made available.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this one.

I thought the SH athletics dept. had a strict policy of not opening up the upper levels even for games they thought could draw more than 8,000? Did that change? I thought I saw an article about this last year with the AD saying they thought keeping the curtains closed was a better home court advantage even for higher profile games...

NovaGrad12 wrote:

Hall2012 wrote:Seton Hall will easily crush its Prudential Center attendance record tomorrow night. With 3/4 of the top opened up and only a handful of seats left available, a crowd of about 16,000 (or more than 4x the crowd for Wed vs Creighton) is expected. It's a sellout of the seats that were made available.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this one.

I thought the SH athletics dept. had a strict policy of not opening up the upper levels even for games they thought could draw more than 8,000? Did that change? I thought I saw an article about this last year with the AD saying they thought keeping the curtains closed was a better home court advantage even for higher profile games...

I wouldn't say "strict policy" but in general they prefer not to. Basically, they won't open the top just to get a few more people in. They need to know they'll get a lot more people. The case with this game was that the lower bowl sold out by the end of November and they were still seeing a lot of demand, so they decided to open up the top.

They opened the top once previously, for Syracuse's last game @SHU, and it essentially amounted to selling out home court advantage for a payday. The crowd was more than 50% Cuse fans. A lot of fans are opposed to opening the top for tomorrow's game, fearing the same thing. There certainly will be a lot of Nova fans, but I doubt they'll have the majority. I'd expect somewhere between 30-40%.

I'm not sure how many of you watch, but the Fox college hoops tipoff show is awesome. Great Big East bubble talk and now a Kyle Lowry feature. Must see TV for a Big East hoops fan.

Hall2012 wrote:

NovaGrad12 wrote:

Hall2012 wrote:Seton Hall will easily crush its Prudential Center attendance record tomorrow night. With 3/4 of the top opened up and only a handful of seats left available, a crowd of about 16,000 (or more than 4x the crowd for Wed vs Creighton) is expected. It's a sellout of the seats that were made available.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this one.

I thought the SH athletics dept. had a strict policy of not opening up the upper levels even for games they thought could draw more than 8,000? Did that change? I thought I saw an article about this last year with the AD saying they thought keeping the curtains closed was a better home court advantage even for higher profile games...

I wouldn't say "strict policy" but in general they prefer not to. Basically, they won't open the top just to get a few more people in. They need to know they'll get a lot more people. The case with this game was that the lower bowl sold out by the end of November and they were still seeing a lot of demand, so they decided to open up the top.

They opened the top once previously, for Syracuse's last game @SHU, and it essentially amounted to selling out home court advantage for a payday. The crowd was more than 50% Cuse fans. A lot of fans are opposed to opening the top for tomorrow's game, fearing the same thing. There certainly will be a lot of Nova fans, but I doubt they'll have the majority. I'd expect somewhere between 30-40%.

Thanks, that makes sense. I didn't think about the potential for the opposing team's fans being able to buy up the extra tickets. Syracuse fans always traveled well to the Wells Fargo Center; it was very frustrating lol.

After Hall cut it to one, Nova went on a 11-0 run to end the half. Second half hasn't really even been competitive.

Something tells me that the Nova guys were a little upset hearing that SHU "had their number." 26 PPG differential in two games this year. And I think SHU is a good squad. But Nova was really focused in both games this year and I don't think it was a coincidence.

I normally stay away from stuff like this, but these refs are hideous

Not a fan of either team but I agree horrible officiating. If X gets a little healthy by march 1st Marquette could get pay back.