Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

What was live attendance compared to past years? The only place in the Pac-12 that regularly filled its building this year was Arizona. Otherwise there were tons of empty seats, even courtside, at almost every game I watched on TV.

What were regular-season TV ratings, other than games that did not involve Caitlin Clark?

 

Porter's brother arrested on suspicion of DWI

Michael Porter Jr. and his brothers could be an entire beat.

 

Hmm. I am sitting here wracking my brain, and I cannot think of any reason that attendance would be down across the board in the Pac 12 this year. Nope.

 

All of you college football and basketball fans who are butthurt over athletes leaving should consider following NCAA wresting. Carter Starocci has won 4 NCAA titles, and is coming back for a fifth year.

Four-time NCAA champion Carter Starocci returning to Penn State

 

The fact the conference is breaking up should have had little or no impact on attendance this year. Football attendance was solid throughout the league.

And I was talking nationwide, not just one conference.

 

He's in an interesting position with the covid bonus year giving him a chance to become the first (and likely only) 5x Division I champion. But this article and many others I've seen keeps referring to him potentially becoming the "first five-time NCAA wrestling champion," which is untrue.

Carlton Haselrig won six NCAA titles back in the era when the DII and DIII champions were allowed to enter the DI tournament. His story would make an awesome sports movie. Was a Pennsylvania state champ in high school despite his school not having a wrestling team. He was asked by a nearby school to come be a practice partner for their heavyweight, then his school petitions for him to be allowed to wrestle in the state tournament. So his only high school wrestling experience is the state tournament itself his senior year. He accepted a football scholarship to Lock Haven, but got injured and transferred to Pitt-Johnstown where he took third in the DII tournament as a freshman and then won both the DII and DI tournaments his sophomore, junior and senior years. He went 15-0 against D1 wrestlers, all in the tournaments.

Anyway, I suppose I'm going to have a year or so of being driven crazy reading news reports about Starocci with that factually inaccurate nugget in them.