Syracuse Basketball Leads Nation In Total Attendance, Second In Average

The Syracuse Orange are used to packing the Carrier Dome with SU fans to cheer them on. As usual, they did it again in 2011-2012.

The school that led the country in attendance for the seventh straight season (and 16 of the last 17) is none other than Kentucky, who welcomed an averaged of 23,721 fans per game into Rupp Arena.

Following the Wildcats is Syracuse, who averaged 23,618 fans per game. The Orange, who had 19 home dates to Kentucky’s 18, led the nation in total fans with 448,736 filling the Carrier Dome.

You can check out the full numbers here (PDF).

Of course, this is the part where someone says, "Well of course they had the most attendance, they played, like 25 home games." And that's when you point out that Louisville, Ohio St., Memphis and Pittsburgh all played more home games than SU and Kentucky, North Carolina and Wisconsin only played one less home game than us.

It's an increase of 1,300 from the previous year (22,312) and a clear indicator that Orange fans responded to the great season since 2010 (22,152) was around the same number as 2011. Alas, if only 100 more people would have bought season tickets, we could have broken Kentucky's streak.

Still, we tend to always do well regardless. Syracuse has never finished lower than fourth in attendance average since opening the Carrier Dome, finishing first 12 times, the last one being 2005.