Kentucky basketball was the team to watch this year, and now the stats back it up for both the men and women’s programs.
Both Kentucky basketball programs were among the top in national attendance for the 2014-15 season according to NCAA attendance figures released Monday.
The men’s program led the nation in total home attendance for the first time in five years with a total of 447,874 fans attending the Wildcats’ 19 home games in Rupp Arena this season. Kentucky was one of only three schools (Syracuse and Louisville) to reach at least 400,000 fans or more at its home games.
The Wildcats also led the nation in overall attendance as 845,594 fans saw the Wildcats play at home, on the road and in neutral sites, over 100,000 more fans than second-place Wisconsin. Kentucky set the NCAA record last season with 922,653 fans.
However, the men’s program ranked second behind Syracuse (23,854) in average home attendance on a game to game basis with 23,572 fans per game. This season marked the fifth time in John Calipari’s six seasons the Wildcats averaged 23,000 or more fans at home games. Rounding out the top five was Louisville (21,386), North Carolina (19,582) and Wisconsin (17,279).
The University of Kentucky women’s basketball program finished seventh nationally in average attendance in 2014-15 with 6,379 fans per game, according to the official rankings kept by the NCAA. It marked the women’s program’s highest ranking since leading the nation in the 1982-83 season.
The women’s team has now been ranked in the top 25 in average attendance 12 straight seasons, including two consecutive in the top 10. The 6,379 fans per game is the second-highest average attendance mark in school history.
In the last six seasons, Kentucky’s women’s program has compiled a 90-10 (.900) record in home contests, including four games played in Rupp Arena. On Nov. 17, 2014, a season high of 22,075 witnessed UK’s 74-64 upset over Baylor in the annual “Pack the House” game in Rupp Arena. It was the second-highest attendance mark in school history.
The Southeastern Conference men’s programs had the third-highest attendance among the 32 NCAA Division I conferences, and the NCAA Tournament saw a slight bump in attendance in this year’s postseason with 739,798 fans, the third-highest total in NCAA history. The women’s programs led the nation in women’s basketball attendance in 2014-15 becoming just the second league in NCAA history to top the one million mark.
From UK Media Relations