December 10, 1966

[zete]

In mid Dec. '66 at Anderson the Falcons along with about 6,ooo others soundly beat Wisconsin. I have been trying to locate the box score on this game but having little luck. Does anyone know where I can locate it?

[brewer]

Those old newspaper boxes are rather abbreviated, but here is a link to one:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=sA ... %2C3450528

[Dayons_Den]

Former Falcon Club director Chuck Nagle played in that game for Wisconsin. The sophomore recorded 18 points for the Badgers.

[factman]

Chuck always kidded, that it was no wonder we had such a good record in Anderson Arena, because they turned out all the lights and introduced everyone with the huge trooper spotlight. He said it took opposing teams a half to adjust to the lights after they came back on!

[zete]

Thanks, looks like Big Walt (Toledo Woodward ) did the bulk of the damage. It was nice getting Toledo preps to come to BG like they did back then.

[Class of 61]

Most interesting stat (to Me) was the attendance.... 5800 + ? WOW! And now we can't get 1500 in a brand new arena that was supposed to be a great recruiting tool?

[FalconTurf]

We get 5,000 plus fans when you eliminate the opportunity for people to see nearly every game for Duke, NC, OSU, or other T-shirt fan favorite college team. I think this has also created the great disconnect from the city of BG that is more interested in broadcasts from national programs than live local games.

[zete]

Not taking anything away from our hockey program, but when it came to town, interest understandably dropped off with FAlcon basketball. Mainly because they won a lot of games and a national championship.
I personally feel the men's bb program is done.

[fredthefalcon]

Well I was at this game too. I was in the midst of my first semester at BG. Made the walk over from Kohl Hall to Anderson and watched the game. We played both Michigan and Wisconsin at Anderson within 10 days of each other I believe and beat both. I remember being in the front row of one of these games with my roommate and rushing the floor afterwards. I believe it was against Michigan as they were the bigger name. It was a magical year and unfortunately the apex of BG basketball for the last 48 years. Somewhere in my archives I believe I have the pocket-sized programs from both games and likely kept score since that was my modus operandi in those days. I still score in baseball despite the plethora of info on scoreboards these days.

[Matty B]

We get 5,000 plus fans when you eliminate the opportunity for people to see nearly every game for Duke, NC, OSU, or other T-shirt fan favorite college team. I think this has also created the great disconnect from the city of BG that is more interested in broadcasts from national programs than live local games.

+1

It's a damn shame that football/basketball attendance is directly correlated to whether OSU or UM is playing at the same time, and that students can name more players on those Big Ten teams than the ones right on their own campus.

[hammb]

All the other theories are fun, and could contribute, but the bottom line is that we averaged around 3000 people a game and had multiple sell outs (4500-5000) as recently as 2002.

Build a fun team to watch that wins a lot of games and fans will come back. Sure, not in as large of numbers as 40 years ago, and those other reasons contribute to that. You're always going to lose attendance to TV and other entertainment avenues that weren't viable 40 years ago. But if you put a good product on the floor you'll gain some of that following back. Right now we've had about 10 years of absolute SHITTY basketball. That's 10 years of BG students who have NEVER seen a winner and as such have no connection whatsoever to BG hoops.

Get the right coach, build it back up, and then we'll worry about why we don't draw 5000+. It's pointless to discuss any other reasons for the dropoff right now because the program couldn't be in worse shape than it is. And it really upsets me seeing how the past 12 years have gone after how the previous 6 had gone. I really thought the program had been built up well...and now it's in the dumps as much as it possibly could be.

[zete]

Get the right coach, build it back up, and then we'll worry about why we don't draw 5000+. It's pointless to discuss any other reasons for the dropoff right now because the program couldn't be in worse shape than it is. And it really upsets me seeing how the past 12 years have gone after how the previous 6 had gone. I really thought the program had been built up well...and now it's in the dumps as much as it possibly could be.

What scares is we get another mediocre head coach and then another 12 years of CRAP!