Cyclones 16th, Hawkeyes 19th in national men's basketball attendance

IOWA CITY — Iowa State ranked 16th and Iowa was 19th in average attendance for the 2015-16 men's basketball season.

The Cyclones averaged 14,270 fans, second among Big 12 schools. The Hawkeyes had 13,858 to rate sixth among Big Ten competitors.

Both teams had slight dips in attendance but improved their national ranking. Iowa State averaged 14,295 fans in 2014-15, 19th best nationally. Iowa averaged 14,101 that year to rank 20th.

Nationally, attendance dipped by 25 fans per game from 2014-15. The Big Ten led the nation for the 40th consecutive year with an average attendance of 12,555, which was down 226 per game last year.

Part of Iowa's attendance dip was caused in part by scheduling. The league failed to schedule any home Saturday games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena last year. In fact, Iowa's only home Saturday men's basketball game last season was Dec. 5, the same day the football team competed for the Big Ten championship in Indianapolis.

'I would have liked to have had a Saturday home game,' Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery told The Gazette last month at the NBA Scouting Combine in Chicago. 'But sometimes it doesn't work. I'm sure it will work this year.

'Whatever the league hands us, we'll play it. I don't politic the front end, I don't complain at the back end. We're in the Big Ten. We expect a challenging schedule. We expect to get maximum exposure. My job is to get my team ready to play that schedule. That's what I'll do.'

Northern Iowa (5,378) ranked 98th overall. Drake (3,087) failed to crack the top 100.

Big Ten

5. Maryland, 17,863; 6. Wisconsin, 17,287; 7. Indiana, 17,106; 11. Nebraska, 15,430; 13. Michigan State, 14,797; 19. Iowa, 13,835; 20. Purdue, 13,662; 27. Illinois, 12,723; 28. Ohio State, 12,283; 33. Michigan, 11,611; 38. Minnesota, 10,706; 72. Northwestern, 6,913; 73. Penn State, 6,909; NR Rutgers, 4,653

Big 12

9. Kansas, 16,436; 16. Iowa State, 14,270; 26. Texas, 12,828; 32. Kansas State, 11,902; 39. West Virginia, 10,583; 43. Oklahoma, 10,000; 56. Texas Tech, 8,284; 82. Baylor, 6,410; 92. Oklahoma State, 5,857; 99. TCU, 5,314

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