Is there any way to fix the atmosphere at Crisler?
Feels like this has been an issue for as long as I can remember, but it just doesn’t feel like Crisler is even close to an intimidating place to play. And when Johns was shooting his FT at the most critical part of the game, the place got so quiet you could hear a pin drop. That has got to be more nerve wracking than the token noise we give opponents at the line. Just doesn’t feel like we have a legit home court advantage like a lot of other schools.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:33 PM ^
Win the game.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:36 PM ^
Not having such a lame atmosphere might actually help us do that more often.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:50 PM ^
I don't know man. My comment was stupid but what do you want? I guess figure out the recipe of blue glass meth they hand out to those gross f**kers at Breslin and do that.
But when a team comes in and shoots lasers and has 20 before asses are even in seats it's pretty hard to get an atmosphere going.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:54 PM ^
Damn, speak!
February 28th, 2020 at 7:04 AM ^
February 27th, 2020 at 9:52 PM ^
No it won't. We just need the team to play better and the coaches to coach better. We got out-coached tonight IMO. For the entire game, Wisconsin had a better strategy and made it work. For every two we got, they got a three. How about we a) defend the 3 better, and b) work on offense to get more open looks from the 3 point line? Then the atmosphere takes care of itself.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:58 PM ^
Maybe a tough road atmosphere makes it more difficult for them to makes those three’s?
February 28th, 2020 at 1:06 AM ^
Bingo. And a tough road atmosphere involves the home crowd standing and going crazy when the home team is playing defense which has a not negligible impact on energy levels. You truly do draw some energy from the home crowd, but at Crisler, there's almost no energy.
February 28th, 2020 at 11:47 AM ^
Well, the easiest answer would be to make lower bowl more accessible. When lower bowl tickets are $150, I can only afford the upper bowl. It doesn't matter how loud the fans are when they are 200ft from the floor.
February 27th, 2020 at 10:51 PM ^
IMO, you are being overly critical of tonight’s coaching. Take a look at our schedule, and it would seem to me that the only times things haven’t gone well were when a starter was out with injury. In those cases, he still finds a way around it, however, tonight it just didn’t come quickly enough.
February 27th, 2020 at 11:01 PM ^
Exactly...tonight the lack of guard depth and unathletic big men on the roster showed very noticeably. Very noticeably.
February 28th, 2020 at 2:44 PM ^
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people are defending paying three forwards and one of Teske/Davis against the 3 point best shooting team in the conference. The fact that it took Juwan 32 minutes to figure out he had to go small and play Johns at the 5 when Potter was on the floor was really bad.
This was a coaching loss.
February 28th, 2020 at 5:21 PM ^
Agreed. When Wiscy took an 8-2 lead early it was already obvious that the big lineup was totally ineffective. But it took JH until after the 12 minute break to being in DDJ, and we were already down double digits -- more than the final margin.
February 27th, 2020 at 10:23 PM ^
Whenever the crowd us loudest tonight, was when the Badgers were at their best.
Trice would either hit a contested three or our defense would break down. I mean you can blame the crowd for not being loud often enough, but each time they were, it seem like it had the opposite effect.
February 28th, 2020 at 5:43 AM ^
There are a number of takeaways that can be gleaned from this game and I'm sure improvements to the game environment are among them.
One observation I'll state: the guys should really practice layups more. Different angles, speeds, degree of difficulty (in terms of having someone defending). They left a lot of easy points out there tonight.
February 28th, 2020 at 12:17 AM ^
Or enlarge the student section. Isn't Crisler a relatively big arena? I don't know how you'd actually make it smaller but it'd be louder.
February 28th, 2020 at 8:19 AM ^
Crisler is relatively small - Capacity is listed at 12,707 (53rd largest according to wiki). Here are comparisons for the conference:
MSU - 14,797
Maryland - 17,472
Nebraska - 15,147
Illinois - 15,544
Indiana - 17,472
Iowa - 15,500
Minnesota - 14,625
Ohio State - 18,809
Penn State - 15,261
Purdue - 14,846
Wisconsin 17,249
Rutgers - 8,000
Northwestern, 7,039
February 28th, 2020 at 9:42 AM ^
Ohio State is a GD aircraft hangar. Talk about a crap ass arena for college hoops.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:38 PM ^
February 27th, 2020 at 10:09 PM ^
To be fair , the Izzone does the same “gooooo state go (clap clap)” chant over and over and over , and their the national pundits darlings . Their section also consists of mostly of shitty people
February 27th, 2020 at 9:40 PM ^
Make the lower level all students.
My wife is a Dukie, so I have been to a bunch of Cameron games. The upper level above the Crazies has a lot of the same old sleepy alumni that we have. But they have enough sense to not fill up the lower level with them.
Students = energy.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:49 PM ^
I mean the area behind the coaches at Cameron is old foagies, I’d wager the number of students is similar, it’s just the set up of Cameron seems more favorable for being louder. Also the duke students are closer to the floor and, frankly, better fans than UM student basketball fans.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:41 PM ^
There is no solution that doesn't cause a decrease in profits. In other words, there is no solution. As should be clear to any Michigan fan by now, this athletic department would steal charitable donations to cancer research if it helped their bottom line.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:59 PM ^
So you’re telling me all the Medicare pts they stroll in from the nursing home are somehow paying for those court side seats?
Come on. Lol.
February 27th, 2020 at 10:05 PM ^
Serve beer. Done.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:44 PM ^
Play better at home.
Crisler has been awesome sporadically for the last ten years. This team isn’t playing well at home so there hasn’t been a whole lot for the crowd to get excited about.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:45 PM ^
So the team that's made the national championship game twice in the last 7 years isn't getting home support because they aren't good enough?
February 27th, 2020 at 10:00 PM ^
Not what he said. He’s talking about this year’s team.
A useful tip-off when people are about to distort someone’s argument is that they start with the word “so”
February 27th, 2020 at 10:04 PM ^
How recent does the success have to be to produce a decent home crowd? If Michigan had won the national title last year, would you be making the same point?
February 27th, 2020 at 10:30 PM ^
Right - this year's team is weak at home. You've watched this team closely and thought they've played well at Crisler in these losses? They've found ways to lose games and often look flat and confused at times. The atmosphere at the Oregon game was great but they lost a tough but winnable game and they just didn't do what they needed to do to win. They played downright awful against Illinois and Ohio State and in the Illinois game they missed FIVE free throws in the closing minutes and lost by 2. And Penn State flat-out outplayed them in their own building; that effort left a lot to be desired.
I think this is likely Juwan getting his coaching legs under him and I doubt it will be like this next year. And I'm excited for some neutral site tournaments. I love this team but - holy hell - are these home losses frustrating.
February 28th, 2020 at 5:27 AM ^
Yeah, I think what we are seeing is an apprehensive crowd. They are kind of expecting the worst, based on what they have seen this year. Crisler itself is fine, that placed was rocking during the Burke/Stauskas years and has been a pretty strong home court advantage, IMO. The structure of the building doesn’t lend itself to a wild-style-students-all-up-in-your-business feel, it never has.
Good news - Michigan is pretty spectacular in neutral court games and that is coming soon. Bad news - I think we need one on the road at OSU or Maryland and a good showing in the BTT or we could see the 8/9 line in the tourney.
February 28th, 2020 at 1:15 PM ^
Crisler was not rocking for the Burke Stauskas years. Went to multiple games those years and have been going consistently for years (was at the Wisconsin game last night). M fans always get up for the big rivalry games or opponents (MSU, OSU, UNC last year, teams of that ilk) but never make it a tough environment for any other opponent because the arena is always half filled and gets into the game only when the team is on a good scoring run. Crowd almost NEVER gets into it when they're on defense, which is the most important role a crowd can play haha. The Burke year was the best I've ever experienced in terms of home intensity, but even that year Crisler was not even close to other tough places to play like Breslin, Mackey, Trohl Center, or even Assembly Hall in Bloomington (especially in 2013).
February 27th, 2020 at 10:31 PM ^
We've got a conjunction expert on our hands!
February 27th, 2020 at 10:01 PM ^
Indiana is always difficult. Purdue the same. Wisconsin the same. Even when lackluster teams the crowd shows up. Crisler crowds are hit or miss and that's sad for this program for how decorated it's been the past decade. It took until Johns dunk for the crowd to even be known tonight, 5+ minutes into the game. That's weak.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:45 PM ^
Please let this narrative die. I know everybody wants to think the crowd has a huge impact on the game, but it's just not true. Good teams win almost all their home games because they're usually playing a team worse than them, bad teams lose their home games because they're generally playing teams better than them. Michigan lost 1 home game each of the last two years and 3 the year before that. That's amongst the best in all of college basketball
You want to be like Cameron Indoor? They watched Stephen F. Austin beat their team despite their iNtImIDaTiNg environment. You want to be like Breslin? They've lost 3 home games this year so far. You want to be like the RAC? They squeezed by northwestern and lost to Michigan without their best player in the single biggest game of the millennium for them. Cheering "better" won't make Johns make free throws and it won't make Trice miss shots. Full stop.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:50 PM ^
The statistics are so strongly against you it isn't even funny.
February 27th, 2020 at 10:15 PM ^
And we've lost 5 games at home this year...in our weak environment. Maybe a coincidence. But maybe we could be a more intimidating environment every single game and find out.
February 28th, 2020 at 7:35 AM ^
I was at two of those losses (OSU and Oregon) and the atmosphere was great. It’s least in Those two games it’s tough to blame the crowd. I think the team stepping on their own D and some terrible officiating had more to do with the losses.
February 27th, 2020 at 10:30 PM ^
How can you measure the intimidation factor of a crowd? Coincidentally teams that are good have better arenas and fans. You can’t easily separate that fact.
February 28th, 2020 at 12:22 AM ^
I understand that this can't be put into a chart and plotted for statistics. But there are times when you just gotta admit what you see/hear doesn't pass the sniff test. Our home crowd/arena layout just isn't great.
Again, my Indiana example still works. Indiana has had some subpar seasons over the years and yet that arena is always a bitch to play in. Hell Rutgers is known to have a tough atmosphere and they've been...Rutgers. Iowa State is one of the better atmospheres and they have had many a shitty seasons before Hoiberg righted the ship and Prohm continued it.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:47 PM ^
This team has been soft at home. It's disappointing. I didn't see from the beginning tonight but they come out flat in a ton of their games at Crisler. And usually, they don't play particularly hard or with any focus at home (which they actually turned around recently - this was a bad slide backwards). It's like they know how hard it is to win on the road in the B1G, so they take the games at home for granted. But, they're not automatic- you gotta bring it in the league every night, no matter who or where you're playing. I had a bad feeling they were going to overlook this Wisconsin game. That's 4 games this team has absolutely blown at home this year - Oregon, Illinois, Ohio State and now this.
The team's gotta give the fans something.
It's frustrating that they can't deal with injuries either - one key player goes out and everyone else plays like garbage, right when they need to step up. But, at full strength they're really good. Let's get Eli in a Rip Hamilton mask, keep everyone else healthy and win some games on neutral courts.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:49 PM ^
Nothing you can do about it, $$$$$$$ talks, and the folks you find annoying are more important to the AD than better atmosphere.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:50 PM ^
I was there, and am a long time lower bowl season ticket holder. I agree, we need to change the culture there. Even when Michigan was making their multiple runs in the 2nd half, it was lame in there. The lower bowl was half full at game time, and never filled up. I have mid court row 13 seats (behind the benches/student section), and my row, other than our 4 was entirely empty. That is embarrassing. You can see it as the students who all have to sit up high in the corner don't always show up, or they come late. The arena was about half empty during the first 5 minutes, when Wiscy went ahead (and kept the lead the rst of the game).
I would love to see some sort of, at the very least, check in system for the lower bowl tickets, and if necessay, i would be willing to relocate to allow more students down low.
I was embarassed by the atmosphere in there tonight, this is such a bandwagon fan base, especially in hoops, and they need to change the environment inside of Crisler.
It sucks being a long time seson ticket holder, who is ALWAYS using his seats and ALWAYS cheering loud throughout but if it takes moving to not as good seats, I am all for it.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:57 PM ^
I know this sounds like a pipe dream, but would be amazing if there was some rule that if you aren't in your seat at the 10 minute mark of the first half they can let students sit in your seats for the rest of the game.
February 28th, 2020 at 9:40 AM ^
or at least until you arrive at the game. Kind of like what the award shows do with seat fillers.
February 27th, 2020 at 9:57 PM ^
double post.
go blue.
February 27th, 2020 at 10:05 PM ^
I can't disagree with you. I've long been furious about the tremendous number of no-shows in the blue seats. But changing the seating policies isn't going to magically change the way the team plays. We got out-coached and out-played tonight. The fans were not going to change that. This team doesn't have a tough at-home mindset.
February 27th, 2020 at 10:19 PM ^
We got out coached by Bo Ryan-lite...yikes