By Dan Blanchard and Grant Pomatto.
COLUMBIA, Mo.- The Mizzou Arena, built in 2004 and located on the south side of campus, is home to both the Mizzou Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams. The gameday environment at Mizzou Arena is unique, and each fan has their own role at a game.
When you enter the arena, you will notice various groups of people. First, you will probably hear and see Mini Mizzou, a faction of Marching Mizzou that serves as the pep band at all home basketball games and home volleyball matches in the Hearnes Center. While not as large as Marching Mizzou at Faurot Field, this band is still plenty loud and even plays a wider variety of songs, contributing to a unique gameday atmosphere.
You will probably also notice the different groups comprising the student section. Making up the first 15 rows, you will see a group of students all wearing matching gold T-shirts. This is ZouCrew, the official university-sanctioned cheering group at Mizzou. These students will follow along with the cheerleader’s chants and cheers, and try to make as much noise as possible. Alexa Timmermann, a freshman member of ZouCrew, said of the group, “I enjoy being in ZouCrew because you don’t have to be super into sports in order to have a good time at the game.”
Just above ZouCrew, you will notice a group of about 25-30 students wearing black shirts with a golden “A” emblazoned on the front. They are the Antlers, an unofficial student group that has been attending home games since 1976. This group is often considered the loudest and the rowdiest in the arena. Their goal is to make Mizzou Arena the toughest venue in the country to play in. They will often times lead chants, and make creative signs designed specifically to get in the heads of the opposition. According to one Antler, who wished to remain anonymous, “The group is really all about doing whatever it can to help Mizzou secure the best home court advantage possible.” At various times, this group has gotten into trouble with the Athletic Department for overstepping boundaries, but in more recent times has fallen back into the good graces of the Mizzou faithful.
As for the building itself, it seats 15,061 but has failed to reach even 50% attendance at each of their home games this season, the lowest total since the 2007-08 season. Emulating an SEC-wide trend, attendance at basketball games has dropped. Missouri is one of just seven basketball programs from the major conferences whose capacity figures are below 50 percent. Ranking 180th among the 236 Division I teams, Mizzou Arena had an average 46.9% attendance-capacity last season, ranking last in the SEC.
What can the Mizzou basketball teams do to make attendance figures go up? They must start winning more of their games. As simple as this solution sounds, winning is a process and could take a few years to get back to when most of the home basketball games were at full capacity.
What can the fans of the Missouri basketball teams do? Have patience and know going in that building a winning program takes time. Show support to both of the basketball teams by going to the games, and by showing that the fans have true confidence in them winning.
Tiger Writers 