Gampel v XL Center Records - Daily Campus

[BigFanCT]

People will show at Gampel. They will. It may be a different crowd, more people from the northern CT area. Same amount of people from the central CT area, maybe. Less New Haven/Fairfield county by far. It may make fans of those counties a little angry. But it's still a worthwhile trip for them for weekend games.

If we are serious about capturing an obviously new era of students and turning them into fans/donors for life, XL has to end. It's dreadful in there. I've been to almost every home game for about 30 years now. What it has become is embarrassing.

People will show for Gampel games. Weeknight or weekend.

 

[August_West]

It's amazing they built a football stadium in East Hartford instead of on campus and they've been sinking money into the dump in Hartford for all these years. The state and University just can't get out of it's own way.

Let's face it, the best thing for the state AND the university would be to locate the University of CT IN Hartford. But that would make too much long term sense and then we would have a bunch of choads on here sayin "but muh dairy bar"

 

[Waquoit]

People will show at Gampel. They will. It may be a different crowd, more people from the northern CT area. Same amount of people from the central CT area, maybe. Less New Haven/Fairfield county by far. It may make fans of those counties a little angry. But it's still a worthwhile trip for them for weekend games.

If we are serious about capturing an obviously new era of students and turning them into fans/donors for life, XL has to end. It's dreadful in there. I've been to almost every home game for about 30 years now. What it has become is embarrassing.

People will show for Gampel games. Weeknight or weekend.

But they don't. The seats are sold and they don't show, especially weeknights. Wishing won't make it so.

 

[Big Loubowski]

Don’t disagree with playing all games in Gampel, but the atmosphere would improve at the XL if it wasn’t such a dump.Make it a modern facility with good amenities and restaurants and it becomes a destination for people. It would completely change the vibe. Of course, that would mean that there was some foresight in Hartford, and that might be asking too much.

 

[UconnU]

The fact that they let potential recruits attend games there is embarrassing

Yep.

 

[zls44]

Stratton’s Take: UConn men’s basketball should play more weekday games on campus

On Tuesday night the reported attendance for UConn’s contest against the Creighton Bluejays, at the XL Center was 10,443 — just 67% of the 15,558 capacity the arena boasts. Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, the Huskies’ on-campus arena, holds 10,167 people. If you took the people from the XL Center...

dailycampus.com

Nice article that takes about 3 minutes to read. Biggest takeaway:

In CONFERENCE games since 2016 (excluding covid year), UConn is 9-11 at the XL Center, and 19-4 at Gampel.

The "venue doesn't matter" crowd can have fun trying to explain this one. And before you say "but we play all the better teams in Hartford", the article already covers that. We have played 7 ranked teams at home during that time span. We are 0-4 at the XL and 2-1 at Gampel.

The data is clear. Why does @Waquoit want UConn to lose more basketball games? Why does he want them to be at a disadvantage? Because he clearly wants UConn to be in a worse position to win.

 

[zls44]

I made a post years ago showing that exact thing. I spent an airplane ride with the media guide and pen and paper.

One guy ran a spreadsheet with deltas, one guy had a media guide and a highlighter.

I know which I find more reliable.

 

[Kathy]

That was my first guess, but has 6 games listed for 2001 there and nothing else. Guessing College Sports Reference might just be wrong, 87 at XL and 6 at HCC versus 288 at Gampel doesn't seem right

It isnt

 

[Kemba Time]

All ranked teams are not created equal, which makes that an extremely lazy point of comparison by the writer along with being a miniscule sample size, but I'll play off that for simplicity's sake. And this is, again, very back-of-the-napkin math so apologies for anything I missed/calculated wrong.

Given where the program was at from 2016-2019, none of these were anywhere close to expected wins (except maaaaybe the '20 Houston game at Gampel given our trajectory at the end of that season) and none of the games listed were ones UConn honestly had a puncher's chance in until 2019-20.

The two Gampel wins were in 2019-20 against No. 15 Florida and No. 21 Houston. I actually see two Gampel losses to ranked Cincinnati teams during this stretch -- 2016-17 to No. 18 Cincy and 2017-18 when the Bearcats were ranked No. 8.

Ranked teams UConn has played at the XL Center since 2016-17:

2016-17
25-4 No. 17 SMU vs. 14-14 UConn. UConn lost 69-61

2017-18
No. 8 Wichita State vs. 7-6 UConn. UConn lost 72-62
18-1 No. 1 VIllanova vs. 10-9 UConn. UConn lost 81-61

2018-19
24-1 No. 9 Houston vs. 13-12 UConn. UConn lost 71-63

2019-20
15-1 No. 23 Wichita State vs. 10-6 UConn. UConn lost 89-86 in double-OT

If you feel like going back five more years to when UConn had a much more representative team and games against ranked opponents were much more likely a fair fight and indictive of any performance difference, you'd find any real evidence based on this point evaporates rather quickly.


2015-16:
XL -- 1-0. SMU was only ranked home game of season

2014-15:
Gampel -- 1-1. Loss to No. 7 Texas. Win over No. 21 SMU

2013-14:
XL -- 2-0. Beat No. 20 Memphis in OT and No. 11 Cincinnati
Gampel: 1-1 Beat No. 15 Florida (Bazz shot game), lost to No. 18 Louisville
AT&T Stadium: 2-0. Beat Florida and Kentucky. Cut down nets.

2012-13:
XL -- 1-1. Beat No. 6 Syracuse. Lost to No. 1 Louisville
Gampel -- 0-1. Lost to No. 7 GTown in double-OT

2011-12:
XL -- 0-1. Lost to No. 12 Marquette
Gampel -- 1-1. Beat No. 25 Harvard. Lost to No. 2 Syracuse.

Total:
XL -- 4-2.
Gampel -- 3-4.

 

[Chief00]

The devil is in how we play on the court. No excuses and if you are going to do an honest compare why start in 2016? Why not include the Calhoun years when we did things the right way. That should be the template.

 

[Kathy]

Did UConn not play at the XL Center until 2011? I have all the data to post records since 2000 but seems weird there were no games played between 2000 and 2011

Obviously wrong. Just looked at ticket stubs
2001-02 - 10 hartford, 7 gampel
2002-03 - 10 hartford, 7 gampel
I could go on

 

[businesslawyer]

Why stop at 2016? You can do this analysis for 20 seasons. What am I missing?

LOL, what do you think you're missing? You really believe that those who want all games in Gampel wouldn't have spent an extra 15 minutes looking up the longer term record if it supported their argument? If you believe that, I have a bridge that connects Brooklyn and Manhattan for sale.

That having been said, it doesn't matter. We don't play the games in Hartford to provide us with a competitive advantage. We do it for economic reasons. And not just the ability to sell more tickets. It has far, far more to do with keeping the support of the Connecticut legislature, so that UConn doesn't go back from a very good public flagship to a very unimportant one.

 

[Kathy]

2003-04 - hartford 11, gampel 9
2004-05 - hartford 11, gampel 8
2005-06 - hartford 11, gampel 7

 

[superjohn]

Did UConn not play at the XL Center until 2011? I have all the data to post records since 2000 but seems weird there were no games played between 2000 and 2011

You must have looked on basketball reference, they don't have a single game being played in Hartford for 8 seasons in a row. They list all the home games as being played in Storrs. It's usually a great resource for basketball stats but they get that one totally wrong.

 

[Waquoit]

One guy ran a spreadsheet with deltas, one guy had a media guide and a highlighter.

I know which I find more reliable.

If the spreadsheet delta guy covered the exact same time period as the media guide guy, the data would match.

 

[zls44]

If the spreadsheet delta guy covered the exact same time period as the media guide guy, the data would match.

Why do you want UConn to be worse at basketball?

 

[Kemba Time]

LOL, what do you think you're missing? You really believe that those who want all games in Gampel wouldn't have spent an extra 15 minutes looking up the longer term record if it supported their argument? If you believe that, I have a bridge that connects Brooklyn and Manhattan for sale.

I went back 5 more seasons against ranked teams above. There would have been a big empty space in the Daily Campus had they decided to do so.

 

[navery12]

You must have looked on basketball reference, they don't have a single game being played in Hartford for 8 seasons in a row. They list all the home games as being played in Storrs. It's usually a great resource for basketball stats but they get that one totally wrong.

Yeah that's where I pulled everything from, I figured it was wrong so gave up and didn't bother trying to get the records

 

[Waquoit]

Why do you want UConn to be worse at basketball?

Changing the subject after a rebuttal means you admit your original post was faulty.

And I reject your premise that giving up millions a year and playing before 1/2 the actual fannies in the seats will help the program.

 

[August_West]

But they don't. The seats are sold and they don't show, especially weeknights. Wishing won't make it so.

Gampel no shows are way less glaring than XL ones. At least to crowd noise , student participation and TV shots.

 

[August_West]

The sad truth is our program doesn’t have a fan base that can justify a 16k barn. Not for ( at best) once a year packed room. Gampel’s 10k and is more in line with what we actually have. Play them all there, make it an impossible ticket, and then revisit XL. This coming from a constant game attendee who drives 70 minutes to Gampel and 50 to XL.

 

[Get a Job]

One guy ran a spreadsheet with deltas, one guy had a media guide and a highlighter.

I know which I find more reliable.

I regret my comment that the effect is "real and huge." What I should have said is that it is true that we shoot better at Gampel vs. XL over the time period studied, and the difference is surprisingly large, BUT correlation is not causation. It can be true that we truly have significantly better performances at Gampel vs. XL and that the venue itself has nothing to do with it.

 

[BigFanCT]

Hurley's wife just tweeted out support for the article, which is fine enough.

But I do hope Hurley isn't acting like a boy about the XL Center around the players. What he does, the players will follow, and if he shows negative attitude towards the venue, they will too. They will in turn likely play poorer in said venue.

Can't say I'm holding any hope that Danny isn't acting like a big baby in front of them though- after his recent antics the last few weeks.

 

[superjohn]

Changing the subject after a rebuttal means you admit your original post was faulty.

And I reject your premise that giving up millions a year and playing before 1/2 the actual fannies in the seats will help the program.

Do you have anything to back up that UConn would be losing out on millions per year if they played all the home games in Storrs instead of splitting with Hartford like they do now?

 

[superjohn]