Purdue Men's and Women's Basketball Finish in Top 20 for Average Attendance

Men, women, and children came to Mackey in droves this past season for both men's and women's basketball.

According to a release from the NCAA earlier today, Purdue Men's Basketball had a total home attendance of 245,916 (17th overall), and averaged 13,662 across their 18 home games (17 regular season, 1 exhibition), good for 20th in the nation. Last season, Purdue's total attendance was 195,884, which averaged 11,523 across 17 games (32nd overall).

Despite their last place finish the year before, the women's team only saw a small dip in their attendance. Purdue Women's Basketball had a total attendance of 100,047 and averaged 6,253 across their 16 home games. Both of those figures gave the women's team the 10th highest attendance in the nation and 2nd in the Big Ten for average attendance (Michigan State finished with 98,418 overall, but had one less game and averaged 6,561). However, Purdue did finish 9th last season and ahead of Michigan State in terms of average attendance, but it was mostly from MSU increasing their attendance and less of Purdue's small drop in attendance.

According to the release from Purdue Athletics:

The 245,916 fans were the second most in Mackey Arena history, just 844 fans shy of the school record (246,744) set during the 2008-09 season.

It marked Purdue’s highest ranking since finishing 17th during the 2010-11 season and it was just the fourth time in the last 16 years that Purdue ranked in the top 20 (17th in 2010-11; 20th in 2009-10; 18th in 2008-09). In terms of percentage of capacity, Purdue was at 92.0 percent this year to rank 28th nationally in that category.

Purdue hasn't released a statement regarding the women's basketball attendance, but I assume their will be one shortly.

At least for the men's home games, I would expect that number to be higher given Villanova's visit to Mackey (which should drive season ticket sales) and if Purdue can live up their expectations throughout the season.