STORRS – Ed Cooley’s head was on a swivel during the national anthem Saturday night, surveying the crowd at Gampel Pavilion. His team locking arms and facing opposite the student section, the Georgetown coach was shocked to see sections of UConn’s on-campus arena unoccupied.
Cooley has made comments about the UConn fanbase before. Three years ago, before Dan Hurley’s first national championship run and while he was still at Providence, Cooley notably called the Huskies’ fanbase “extremely spoiled” for the success of its programs, saying, “don’t be arrogant with it” and “appreciate winning.”
Ten seconds into his opening statement on Saturday night, after UConn survived his Hoyas, 79-75, Cooley had more to say.
“Honestly, I was surprised that there was empty seats up in the (student) section,” he said. “I mean, you have a national championship team, this place should be sold out every day. I just was shocked, that actually shocked me. You have a top 10 team on a Saturday night game, this place should’ve been bouncing off the wall on a Saturday night.”
He made a similar comment to Hurley after the game, and this time the Huskies’ coach agreed with him.
“We’re the Basketball Capital of the World, there shouldn’t be criticisms of our crowds at games,” Hurley said. “When I saw Ed during the handshake line, Ed asked me what was up with the crowd. There was just a lot of empty seats, I think the section behind our basket was empty. It should be a madhouse when we play here at the Basketball Capital of the World.”
Hurley has been known to encourage the crowd to get loud during games – it even got him ejected once. But he is starting to get fed up.
“I’ve kind of given up on that a little bit. You know, I’ve done that and I don’t get the same response,” he said. “When we first got here, we played in front of paltry crowds… I remember playing at the XL Center in front of 7, 8, 9,000 people versus Tulsa or in here versus South Florida – I’m not (bleeping) on them, those are all really good programs, but just the state of where we were getting 5 or 6,000 people. I mean, we’ve given our fans two national championships out of the last three years. We’re 24-2 and 14-1, and we’ve been ranked at the top of the rankings the whole year.”
This season in particular, home games have been a short respite from the hostile environments UConn has faced on the road, where – just about – every opposing team and fan base makes the most of their shot at one of the top teams in the country.
“When we look at the environments that we play in when we wear the UConn jersey, Xavier is a madhouse when we go there, Creighton is a madhouse, when we play St. John’s now in the Big East road game, that’s not Storrs South no more. That environment that we played in was a serious, serious, nasty environment, intense environment, we were at a major disadvantage in terms of the atmosphere,” Hurley said. “Fans can criticize me all you want, I’ve got some (bleeping) equity. I got two national championships here in the last three years. We’ve given you the season that there’s a lot of programs across the country whose fans wish they had going.”
“I’m not (trying to hype the crowd) anymore though,” he said. “I asked the players to try to do it… It’s not a (bleeping) social event, right? Like, this is the Basketball Capital of the World, we need our fans to come to the game and be loud as (bleep) from the start. It needs to be a madhouse.”