TEAMS ANNOUCNED FOR 56TH ANNUAL WESTSTAR BANK DON HASKINS SUN BOWL INVITATIONAL
- Thread starter Roy_Bigwood_05
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I'm going to throw this out there because it's worth mentioning. Back in '92, 8500 in attendance meant 8500 in attendance.
In this day and age, it is no exaggeration to say that arenas will bump attendance up by several thousand. It is no longer how many attended, but rather tickets sold, promotional tix given away, etc.
I remember a game from MinerTV this last season where attendance was quoted at around 6000. By the look of things, I'd have guessed 2000...tops. I had never seen the Don so empty in all my life.
Haha! Hey now, I went there. (Got my master's at UTEP, though.)
Northwestern also played in the Sun Bowl in 2005 as the last Big Ten rep.
Sorry I didn't mean any disrespect towards your alma mater. I genuinely don't keep up with the power schools outside the region.
Don't worry; I didn't take it that way. Northwestern has never exactly been a power in basketball. This last season they made headlines for making their first NCAA Tournament ever. (They've been to the NIT a bunch of times but this was their first NCAA Tourney appearance.) They won their first game over Vanderbilt (it was fun for a brief period to claim we were undefeated in our NCAA Tourney appearances) before losing a close one to Gonzaga in the second round.
So despite their long futility in basketball, did you know that Northwestern hosted the very first NCAA Final Four? They hosted the Final Four a second time, too, but they hosted the very first one. And yet they never even had a ticket to the Big Dance until last season. Pretty pathetic.
They are the only private school in the Big Ten, so they don't have a typical "state flagship" Big Ten name. The origin of the name comes from their founding mission to serve the people of the former Northwest Territory. The school is located just north of Chicago. They are a founding member of the Big Ten and have been there all along, but their sports programs have not always enjoyed success. Lots of famous people went there.(<-Link)
Thats right. Doc was fired earlier in 2012 and that was Miles 1st season. UTEP beat them pretty well if I remember correctly
Ugh.... I remember that tournament. That was where I learned to despise the team from Austin. Their coach was a very vocal Tom Penders.
Why "ugh"? We won that tourney. Up by 30 ish at one point, UT pulls to within 2 or 3, we hold on for the win. It was glorious!
