Greg Hansen: Dwindling attendance a troubling trend for Arizona Wildcats, rest of Pac-12

None of the six Pac-12 schools sold out Senior Day on Saturday. Even league champion Oregon drew just 10,262, leaving 2,000 empty seats at Matthew Knight Arena. Overall, more than 20,000 seats went unsold.

This is the point at which you might ask: What about McKale Center?

Arizona announced that 13,604 tickets were sold against Washington, which is 1,040 under listed capacity. Ordinarily, that might be considered trifling news because, after all, Arizona led the Pac-12 in attendance with 13,654 per game, the 35th consecutive year McKale has led the league.

But there’s this: It was the first time since 1983 that Arizona didn’t pack the house, or come within a few hundred of a sellout, for so-called Senior Day.

For the first time I can remember, Arizona used TV, newspaper and social media advertising in attempt to fill the arena. A family four-pack, which included hot dogs and drinks, was available for $90.

What is this, ASU?

Is college basketball on the West Coast and at Arizona on a path similar to the shrinking audience that attends Pac-12 football games?

Much like the decline in Pac-12 football attendance, which last fall drew its lowest attendance average since 1982, numbers fell significantly in Pac-12 basketball. The average crowd for Pac-12 home teams this year was 7,064. That’s down from 7,284 a year ago, but more to the point, nine teams suffered declines at the gate.

The year Arizona hired Sean Miller, 2009, the average home crowd in the league was 8,340. Now, at 7,064, it’s roughly a 15 percent drop at the gate.

Is it because, like football, start times are later and later and all over the place? Arizona’s Thursday game against WSU didn’t tipoff until 8:41 p.m. Or is it because the league’s premier players bolt for pro basketball before they can build a kinship with fans? Or is it because so many schools, Arizona included, load up the pre-conference home schedule with cupcakes?

It’s probably a bit of all three.

ASU was down 1,300 per game to 9,251, and yet Bobby Hurley’s Sun Devils have been relevant all season. League champ Oregon puzzlingly fell back to 8,038 per game, down 500 per opening.

Although ticket prices are much less, Oregon’s powerful women’s basketball team, at 10,852 fans per home game, outdrew Dana Altman’s men’s league champions by almost 25 percent. That’s the statistic of the year in Pac-12 basketball.

Of 172 total home games in the Pac-12, only 14 were on-the-number sellouts.

USC, which appears bound for the NCAA Tournament with the ability to win a few games, drew just 7,622 for Saturday’s epic, last-second victory over UCLA, which had become the league’s most compelling basketball story. That’s roughly 3,000 empty seats at the Galen Center.

That’s nothing new. USC averaged just 3,247 at home a year ago.

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But what is new is that Arizona’s average of 13,654 is the second smallest number since McKale’s capacity was increased after the 1994 Final Four season. The previous smallest was 13,602, during Sean Miller’s third season — a total rebuild job — when the Wildcats drew just 8,433 for an NIT game against Bucknell.

The Zona Zoo is no longer a significant presence, game by game, at McKale. The student audience is not only shrinking, but it seems to have lost some of its voice. The real noise at McKale comes from the over-50 crowd.

The last time “Senior Day’’ didn’t work at McKale was 1983, when one-year coach Ben Lindsey went 4-24. The announced crowd that day was 6,119, but it was a casualty of more than Lindsey’s one failed season.

In 1982, Fred Snowden coached his last Senior Day at McKale and the school’s TV partner, KZAZ, circulated 5,000 free tickets in the community. Even with that boost, the crowd was listed at 11,529.

I’m not saying that was a long time ago, but Snowden started his three seniors that night, including forward John Belobraydic. A year ago, Belobraydic’s sister-in-law, Johanna, was my grandson’s kindergarten teacher at the Tanque Verde Elementary School.

But it does give a perspective on how long it has been since Tucsonans didn’t rush to McKale to bid a sometimes weepy goodbye by seniors like Steve Kerr, Luke Walton and T.J. McConnell.

Where Arizona’s basketball program goes from here isn’t the only troubling issue in Pac-12 basketball.

Utah, which hasn’t been played in the postseason since 2016, looked to be a rising power five years ago, routinely drawing crowds near 13,000 at the Huntsman Center. The Utes drew just 10,561 this year and were clearly the No. 3 team in their state, behind BYU and Utah State.

Washington, of all teams, finished last yet probably had the most encouraging year at the gate; the Huskies had six games that were at or near sellout crowds of 9,269 — against Gonzaga, UCLA, Oregon, Arizona, ASU and Washington State.

Yet the Huskies seem sure to lose their two leading players, one-and-done freshmen Isiaah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels. More troubling, Mike Hopkins does not yet have a player signed for the Class of 2020 yet.

With Arizona stuck in another one-and-done cycle, and Oregon sure to drop with the loss of senior point guard Payton Pritchard, the future of Pac-12 basketball inevitably turns to UCLA. Who knows how long that will last? UCLA has bounced through three coaches the last decade.

College basketball, especially the Pac-12, is so fluid that Washington became the first team since USC in 1986 to go from first place to last place in one season.

On Saturday it became the third last-place team to beat Arizona at McKale Center since 1984. After the game, Sean Miller said “I feel terrible for our crowd and our fans.’’

Sunday, former Arizona center and NBA standout Channing Frye punched up this tweet: “I love my team, my school, everything about the UA. But in the last few years something changed. No smiles, no pride, no sense of tradition.’’

And if it’s like that at McKale, you can imagine what it’s like at other Pac-12 precincts.