Hlas: Saturday night Hawkeyes’ home game is novel concept

Something rare and precious returns to Carver-Hawkeye Arena this weekend.

It's a men's basketball game that is both on a Saturday and starts at 7 p.m. Ohio State-Iowa is one of just three Saturday games and one of their two home 7 p.m. starts on the Hawkeyes' 18-game home schedule.

That should help attendance, which hasn't been great by Iowa standards this winter. The Hawkeyes are averaging 11,684 per home game, down 2,151 per game from last season's average of 13,835.

That's the largest drop of any Big Ten team, and 'drops' are the operative word. No Big Ten program is averaging more fans per game than a season ago.

In fairness, Michigan State and Wisconsin have again had nothing but sellouts this season, and the differences from last year's attendance to this year's at Nebraska (15,291!) and Purdue have been negligible.

Everyone else in the league is averaging a drop of 345 fans per game to Iowa's 2,151. The numbers are through Wednesday's games.

The Big Ten is averaging 595 fewer fans for home games than it did last season. That's not the stuff of bankruptcy, not when the conference's television contracts give its schools more gold than King Midas had on his most-golden day.

But it says things. One is that people aren't thrilled about the starting times thrust upon them to suit the whims of television.

In the Central time zone, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. don't play as well as a weeknight tipoff time as 7 p.m., which gives fans a chance to both get to the arenas in time and get home at a favorable hour.

So that's one thing. Another is people just aren't as into college basketball in some places as they once were. Iowa appears to be one such place. That's not just a reference to this isolated season when everyone knew the Hawkeyes probably wouldn't have the on-court success it enjoyed the previous three years.

If it held, Iowa's current 11,684 average would be its lowest since the 11,635 per game it drew in Fran McCaffery's first season as coach, 2010-11. Which was a forward jump of over 2,000 from Todd Lickliter's final year.

In this millennium, Iowa averaged 15,156 fans in 2000, a season-sellout of 15,500 in 2001, and 15,207 in 2002. Those levels weren't again approached until 14,976 in 2014 and 14,101 in 2015.

That 2014 average, by the way, ranks 18th among the program's best years for home attendance. All of the top 17 came between 1983 and 2002.

The Hawkeyes have played three ranked teams at Carver this season, but haven't had a crowd as large as 14,000.

Now, let's also note Iowa was in the nation's top 21 in attendance in each of the last four seasons and the Big Ten again easily leads all leagues. It has big schools, big arenas, big basketball tradition. It isn't a basketball boneyard. Still, you can take things too much for granted.

Hey, the world changes and those who live in the past miss the present. But something seems askew when the crowd at an Iowa-Illinois game in Champaign is just 11,787, which it was Wednesday. Seven of the Hawkeyes' previous 10 visits there were before sellout crowds of 16,618, but the last two have been the smallest in a long, long time. And they're rivals.

Well, here's some good news: The women's basketball teams of Drake and Northern Iowa play Friday night at UNI's McLeod Center. Both are 8-0 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Admission is free.

Oh, the game starts at 7 p.m., not 6 or 8.