Attendance was really bad last night

It's disappointing but not a surprise. This is not a fun team to watch. I've never been a fan of this style of basketball that our program is currently using. I think a team is good when they are a reflection of their coach. I like JB but I would like our basketball program to be more like our football program or dare I say it....like the MSU program. I want tough interior defense that can intimidate opponents, rebound, dunk every once in a while with ferocity, and score some easy baskets. For all of the problems that came with the Fab 5, one thing you could always be sure of. They didn't give a fuck who their opponent was. They believed they were better on the court and would beat them. And most times they did. These teams we've had lately feel like they have more of a finesse mid-major type identity where they have to find a way to beat the big dogs. Fuck that. We should be one of the big dogs, and not just in getting to the Final Four or any of that. I mean attitude.

I'm not even remotely surprised.  I think a lot of people are over Beilein's program.  We've seen enough of baby soft big men and 4 guys standing around the 3 point line waiting to chuck up a contested shot with 2 seconds on the shot clock.  I am grateful to JB for bringing the program back from the dead, but it's high time for him to move on.  We need a major overhaul with a good young coach who can recruit.  

but live an hour and a half away and kids had homework.  Tickets were $42 each for lower bowl.  kind of steep.  

I think it will be fine once we get into the meat of the season. Hard to get excited about November basketball, especially with all the excitement from football season. That's not an uncommon sight if you look around the country right now. The basketball "Blue Bloods" like Duke, NC, and Indiana have packed gyms, but that's their sport.

so was the baseketball.    

If you rely on single game purchases, you are dead in the water to begin with.

What sort of moron would buy season tickets to this crappy schedule?

We basically play Trump University 9 times with the ACC challenge mixed in before league play.

Start scheduling like MSU - even if that might mean you lose 4-6 games before league play.

I've been less and less interested in M men's basketball as the one-dimensional style that Beilien uses has gotten less and less effective.

If and when we can shoot lights-out from behind the arc we can win. If we can't we lose. No inside game, poor defense, not much of what I'd call toughness. So when Beilein hits the lottery and gets a Burke or Stauskas, things go well. Same thing when I hit the lottery. But I don't count on that happening and Beilein seems to.

Bottom line: If you want people to be excited about your team, have an exciting team and win. Otherwise you get empty seats and find yourself tempted to give away tickets with six-packs of Coke or other dumb things.

of a few years ago when it came to recruiting. When we didn't see any dramatic impact in the first recruiting class after the 2013 NC game appearance, the general response was, "that's the way basketball recruiting is—we'll have to wait for another year for the recruiting uptick to happen."

We're still waiting.

Season Student tickets (at least since 2012/3 not sure what it's like now) for basketball are a gigantic pain in the ass. The bowl section is usually never full, but they insist on having you claim your tickets multiple times during the season. They don't include every game, you're not guaranteed tickets to some games, and the list goes on and on. It's so confusing I stopped bothering after my frosh year.

How about given the interest, just having the students line up up and swipetheir mcard (free admission) and increasing student season football tickets by like 10 dollars a season to make up for it? Even with Burke etc... the upper bowl was never full (besides like MSU,OSU)

That's what happens when your team loses and is just not any fun to watch. You could blame the Saturday game on football malaise and a crappy opponent, but this is a B1G/ACC Challenge game at home days afterwards. Football had nothing to do with last night's showing. 

People don't like watching a losing product. This team is boring, has no star power, and predictably falls apart in the second half of every meaningful game it plays. Its a team that tries to play hero ball, but does not have any actual heroes who know how to play it. 

There is no reason for Michigan basketball to aspire to be the 'little engine that could' team. Since that is what we've been for a while now, no one should be surprised that attendance is down. 

For basketball in general, attendance will never be good unless you can develop a consistent tradition of success that will drive people to attend. That's how it is everywhere. Michigan hoops has finished in the top 25 only 3 times in the past 18 years, and only 4 times in the past 22. Beilein has also only elevated our program from horrible to mediocre (he has finished in the top 25 3 times in the past 9 years). 

Mediocre just isn't good enough to drive attendance for hoops particularly when our last two years we missed the NIT and were a play-in team. The farther away we get from a successful year, the worse attendance will get. If Michigan hoops doesn't have a top 25 season this year, attendance is gonna get insanely bad.

I was displeased to see that the entire upper bowl was mostly vacant on a few of the camera shots that pointed in that direction.  As a result, the crowd was relatively moribund last night.  Michigan shouldn't have blown the game, but they didn't get much support from the crowd last night.