UK Basketball wins attendance title again

Lexington, Ky. – Just as fans routinely pack Rupp Arena to watch the Wildcats play, Kentucky annually leads the nation in average attendance. The NCAA’s recently compiled attendance figures from this past season reveal that in 2008-09, for the 13th time in 14 years, UK’s average crowd of 22,239 led all of Division I men’s basketball.

It marks the 21st time in the 33-year history of Rupp Arena that Kentucky has had the top attendance figure. A total of 422,547 fans passed through the turnstiles for 19 Wildcat games during the 2008-09 season. Syracuse, with an average crowd of 21,044, was second, followed by North Carolina (21,035), Tennessee (20,483) and Louisville (19,397).

Nationally, 27.7 million attended Division I men’s games last season, an average of 5,378 per game. The Southeastern Conference was second among all conferences in average attendance, drawing 11,625 fans, behind only the Big Ten’s 12,519 average.

Just think, UK packed Rupp to a tune of over 22,000 every game in a year marked by turmoil, bad losses, and an uncertain (to say the least) coaching situation. What is it going to be like next year? I don’t think there’s going to be a game and public practice when the UK fars are not going to fill every seat.

Also, a John Calipari Twitter update: I’m really not sure what has happened since May 12, because in that time period, Calipari has jumped from 20,784 followers to 47,807. Unbelievable. Twitterholic.com hasn’t been updated yet today, but yesterday Calipari was ranked 470th worldwide in terms of followers.

I still don’t think anybody knows what his ceiling is. He’s starting to pass legitimate celebrities (namely Jennifer Aniston and the Sports Guy Bill Simmons are up next) and with how fast he is rising, we could have the whole Commonwealth on Twitter just for Coach Cal.

Finally, most everything I have heard this weekend points to John Wall deciding between UK and Miami relatively soon. Last night some North Carolina radio stations were suggesting that Wall would announce today (as Andy Katz said). Needless to say, we’ll all be watching.