With prospects increasing each week of three Mountain West teams making the NCAA Tournament field, conference commissioner Craig Thompson wasn’t interested Monday in thinking about bargain-basement basketball.
There still was a buzz going around the conference Monday about the crowd of 22,700 on Saturday for the Air Force-BYU game at the Marriott Center in Provo. Thompson also noted that the New Mexico-UNLV game at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas drew 17,000, giving the conference a big attendance weekend.
But there was an asterisk. BYU had sold out the Marriott Center with discounted ticket prices. Should it be necessary for a conference with a highly competitive and interesting race to have discounted ticket prices to get fans to watch?
“Well, I don’t know – that’s one of those hypothetical questions we can’t answer,” Thompson said. “If there hadn’t been the discounted tickets, what might there have been – 15,000, 16,000, 12,000? I don’t know. I know they were averaging just under 10,000. Again, I think a Saturday afternoon for a big title competition like that, there probably would have been a whale of a crowd with or without discounted tickets.”
Chris Peludat, assistant athletic director for ticket operations at the Air Force Academy, said most basketball programs across the country have special ticket promotions for some games during the season.
BYU didn’t give tickets away, but the discounted prices seemed a factor in more than doubling the season’s average crowd of just more than 9,000.
The discount formula used by BYU had $18 tickets reduced to $10, $12 tickets down to $5, $10 tickets at $5 and $5 tickets down to $1.
Peludat and the Air Force marketing department work their crowd differently. They face a capacity of 5,858 in Clune Arena so they don’t discount the entire building. With some extra seating on the floor, crowds have been pushed to more than 6,000.
“We’ve had $2 Tuesdays, and for the Colorado State game on Feb. 27 we’ll have a Valentine’s Day special of buy a ticket and get one free,” Peludat said. “We do ours more on selective games and selective areas in our arena and we announce them before the season begins.”
The $2 tickets on designated Tuesday night games are specifically in Clune Arena’s $7 seating sections, according to Peludat. Air Force’s normal ticket prices range from $15 to $7.
A group of 1,000 cadets called “The cadets of Section 8” bolster the attendance at Clune Arena. An activities ticket covers their price of admission. Academy officials are exploring the possibility of sending a sizable contingent of cadets if Air Force gets into the NCAA Tournament.
Balancing out
Through most of the first part of conference play, the consensus of coaches had Air Force as the team playing the best. The consensus at the halfway point ranks Air Force as the best team, but UNLV as the most talented team.
After losing 61-52 at BYU, the Falcons dropped from 16th to 17th in the AP rankings and from 13th to 16th in the coaches rankings.
Air Force’s RPI rating was 13, down five places from last week.
The Falcons shot a season-low 37.8 percent from the floor against the Cougars.
The Falcons, at 19-3 overall and 6-2 in the conference, are off in the early games this week. Coach Jeff Bzdelik isn’t that interested in watching the outcome of early-week games in terms of Air Force’s lead dropping to a half-game.
“We have to be active participants in our own rescue,” Bzdel-
ik said. “We can’t depend on anyone else doing our job for us.”
Random thoughts
New Mexico coach Ritchie McKay isn’t planning to put J.R. Giddens (ankle) in the lineup again until he’s 100 percent healthy. …
San Diego State coach Steve Fisher says one play could have changed the outcome in three of his team’s four losses.
Irv Moss can be reached at 303-954-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
