In spring of 2006 Herb Sendek accepted a job offer from Arizona State, ending his 10-year tenure as N.C. State’s basketball coach. While the coach had led the Wolfpack to five straight NCAA tournament appearances, attendance was poor during Sendek’s tenure, and many Wolfpack fans felt that Sendek had reached his potential as the school’s coach. While N.C. State did not fire Sendek, they made no effort to retain the coach when Arizona State came calling.

Venomous criticism of Wolfpack fans ensued from the national basketball world. Sendek’s former boss, Rick Pitino, said, "He’s not Jimmy Valvano, and that’s something N.C. State couldn’t understand," says Louisville coach Rick Pitino, who hired Sendek as an assistant at Providence and Kentucky. "The fans don’t understand how good he is." ESPN analyst Dick Vitale called Sendek "a steal for ASU. He got totally frustrated about never being truly accepted" at North Carolina State. "There you better have a lot of personality. That’s why Jimmy V was such a big success. Personality plays a big part in trying to offset the popularity and strength of Duke and North Carolina.

The comment that stirred the most response, however, was Gregg Doyal of CBSSports.com who wrote:

Wolfpack fans should be ashamed. In a day and age where coaches outright cheat or clandestinely cut so many corners that emergency ethics meetings are called, Sendek was honorable. For a guy as smart as he was, he was too dumb to cheat, too naïve to know that you almost can’t win at a place like N.C. State without looking the other way. But he was such a good coach, he won in spite of himself.  Around the country, coaches know. Sendek was treated shabbily by Wolfpack nation — by sniping fans, reader-pandering media and an administration that never once stood up and said ENOUGH!

So, Sendek left the “unrealistic fanbase” for a happier place. Finally , he would be appreciated for his work, right? After all, it took Arizona State 30 years to make 5 NCAA trips, and they had only had three 20-win seasons in the past 25 years. It stands to reason that a coach that comes in and goes 75-53 in his first four seasons would electrify the fanbase and be regarded as a hero. Right?

Arizona State plays their home games in the 14,000-seat Wells Fargo Arena in Phoenix, the 5th largest city in the United States. These fans, after so many years of bad basketball, should fill the place up after last year’s 25-10 season. This season has been good so far, but not quite as successful. The team is 22-9, has an RPI ranking of #54, and stands a good shot of getting back into the NCAA tournament with a good showing this weekend. Reality, though, is a quite different thing.

Average attendance at Arizona State’s home games was 7,765 (55% capacity) this season, down 17% from last season. In only 36% of the games did they exceed that average. Sendek’s team only drew more than 10,000 fans twice in 19 games. Only 57% of the time was the arena even half full . No wonder Sendek thought the RBC Center would be “an unmitigated disaster” if its capacity exceeded 15,000.

Yes, it is the same old Herb. Put together a schedule with some horrendously awful non-conference nobodies at home, lose to good teams on the road, and never win a game you aren’t supposed to win. It appears that Arizona State fans are voting with their feet. People in Phoenix would rather be doing almost anything else than watching Herb Sendek’s team. In a couple of years they will start to grumble, and the rallying cry from the media and Pitino protégés will start again. Yet nobody will acknowledge that it wasn’t repulsive fans that ended Sendek’s term in Raleigh. It was his repulsive product.

Part II (3/11/2010)

Since the smartypants with an “observer” IP address isn’t satisfied with this analysis, I’ll continue. Let’s look at the attendance and winning percentages for each Arizona State and N.C. State over the past 11 seasons.

Average attendance for the past 11 seasons at Arizona State was 7,957 and they have won 52.2% of the time. As one can see, the team has won much more than average this season, yet attendance is below the 11-year average. Here in Raleigh NCSU has averaged 14,238 over the past seasons and won 58% of the time. This season’s average attendance and winning percentage is below the average. (Though it should be noted that this season there was a snowy day for a game which resulted in attendance of only 2,000 and there was a Reynolds Coliseum game where only about 4,500 people attended. Removing that snowy anomaly attendance was around 13,800, far closer to the 11-year average.)

This year aside, NCSU fans are much less likely to be swayed by the team’s record than Arizona State fans are. If we run a multiple regression analyses on both data tables, we get R-Squared values of 0.327 for Arizona State and 0.002 for NCSU. Both values show that the team’s record is a very poor predictor for attendance. There is something else involved. Certainly factors such as arena age, schedule difficulty, weather, timing of the games (New Years, competing against bowl games, weekend games, television coverage, etc) play roles into fans choices to attend.

As a 37-year fan of basketball in the area, with intense study of each fanbase, my conclusion is that the the brand of basketball on the court and the perception of the team’s ability to win games both play overwhelming roles over long periods of time. Heralded recruits, coaches who talk positively about winning, and teams that surprise fans with wins over higher-ranked teams are the chief causes for higher attendance.

In the six years preceding Herb Sendek’s arrival at Arizona State, the program won 49.7% of its games. Sendek has won 56.9% of his games, yet average attendance has only risen by 89 fans (between the two periods), a 1% increase. Keep in mind that that “increase” includes the period when Pendergraph as well as a host of other inherited ASU players were on the court. This is Herb’s ship now, and it’s headed in a course that is all too familiar.

Now, isn’t that a little more in-depth analysis than we get from something like Rimshots? Journalists aren’t losing their jobs because of the failure to compare trends across the PAC-10, they are losing their jobs because of their failure to present a compelling product. Circulation is down for a reason, and it isn’t because people with “observer” in their email addresses are doing such wonderful, in-depth analyses when they write articles like Rimshots and articles implying that the RBC Center is too big for N.C. State’s basketball program. Also, I don’t mind criticism and tactful disagreement, but I respect it a lot more when someone has the guts to use their real name.