A question for you

Viewing the full and noisy stands in the Orleans Arena for the West Coast Conference semi-finals, it got PTW wondering why the attendance for the WAC tourney pales in comparison?

As for what was witnessed over the last few days (and what will be seen tonight), is it because Gonzaga brings a large number of fans and possibly St. Mary's too? Having BYU around this time also had to help.

It doesn't seem likely that Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, Portland, San Diego, USF and Santa Clara lured all that many behinds in the seats (is PTW off base with any of the listings here?).

Having some of those schools also not being all that geographically far away from Sin City probably aided the numbers but again, the majority of the closer schools aren't draws.

So who are the WAC schools bringing in sizeable numbers to the tourney? Does Utah State lead? Will a goodly contingent of Reno-ites be heading south for Thursday? How about any exodus from Las Cruces? The rest of the WAC members either have either virtually no chance of winning or are fairly distant from LV and don't seem to travel well fan-wise.

Having the game setup adopted this year will help -- last season's format seemed a disaster for attendance -- but will the Orleans be jammed for any WAC tourney contest?