SPLIT GAMES PRESENT PROBLEMS AT SEMO

Southeast athletic director Carroll Williams said he likes the idea of putting women's teams into the spotlight, but even he admits that splitting the nights has caused several problems.

Under the current setup, the Southeast women's basketball team is averaging 672 fans through seven home games. That figure is inflated by an average attendance of 1,046 on four Saturday games which were scheduled before the men. In three week night games when the men did not play, the Otahkians average 435 fans. Last year, when playing exclusively before the men, the Otahkians average attendance was 1,022.

Southeast is not the only school in the OVC encountering these declining numbers. But attendance aside, athletic directors throughout the OVC are displeased with the current arrangement.

"Just about every athletic director is disappointed and does not like the current schedule," Williams said. "I really don't like the nights they are for a couple of reasons.

"First, we (Southeast) only get so many nights at the Show Me Center. We have other sports, like volleyball and gymnastics, we like to get in there, but we can't get them in there as much when we have the men and women playing basketball on different dates.

"Second, and this is not necessarily for home games, but the way we're scheduling, we're missing a lot of classes. With the old Saturday and Monday doubleheaders, both teams could leave Friday afternoon after classes, come back late Monday and only miss one day of class. Now with different nights, we miss a lot of class, both the men and women."

"Third, our sports teams are competing with a lot of different things for the dollar. Some fans want to follow various high school basketball teams, then you throw in a movie or a concert and there is only so much money for the fans to spend.

"Then you've got the convenience factor. It's so much easier for our fans to see both teams play on one night."

Southeast women's coach Ed Arnzen said he likes the current setup that allows for women's teams to have plenty of nights of their own. And he said attendance will pick up for his team as soon as it starts doing better on the court. The Otahkians, after many years of success, went 5-21 last year and are 8-15 this season.

"We do get better crowds (playing on the same nights as the men), but I like what we have," said Arnzen. "The last two years we've been down and you can see that in the crowds.

"But all those years we were winning, whenever we played by ourself (for non-league games), we drew pretty well here. People want to see a winner. Hopefully we'll be back up the next few years and I think we could get back to where we average 1,000 to 1,500 a game, like we've done in the past."

Arnzen admits there aren't many OVC women's teams that draw well, but he would not like to see the league go back to strictly playing doubleheaders.

"Tennessee Tech draws very well (more than 2,000 fans watched Tech play the Otahkians recently) and I think we could support crowds, but I don't know if others could," he said. "But I would like to see it (the games) split at least somewhat."