Reply To: Facilities Improvements

Forum Forum Lehigh Sports Lehigh Men’s Basketball Facilities Improvements Reply To: Facilities Improvements

#12894
jimk72
jimk72
Participant

As this thread has moved more toward the basketball attendance issue, I’d like to agree and disagree with ngineer. Improvements would do little to improve attendance, but TV games and cultural changes are not the problem in my opinion. Tradition has a lot to do with it. We are a historically losing program of epic irrelevance in Pa.’s 3rd largest metro that has been a hotbed of high school football and wrestling. Plus there are a zillion things to do around here considering the proximity of NYC and Philly. Lehigh’s basketball success is fairly recent. Those are the main reasons for poor local support. If we keep winning, recruiting the likes of Knutson’s and Mccollum’s and Kempton’s, and the league continues to improve, over time the crowd’s will continue to gradually improve.

I agree we have a big old barn and that an arena like Quinipiac or Bucknell would be nicer, but Stabler’s easy to get to since the Parkway went in, has plenty of parking & cheap admission. And I truly enjoy the games in person versus TV. You can see up close how big and talented these kids are at the Patriot league level. An on campus venue would improve student attendance, which is important, but south side Bethlehem streets are tougher for parking and access and I doubt it would improve regional support without continuing to improve the product on the court.