Southern Illinois fans...

[Scouter]

My guess is that a lot of the people weren't from C-dale, but were alums or other fans in the St. Louis-metro area.

[Majik45]

I think a lot of SIU grads live in and around the St. Louis area which explains the large contigent of SIU fans at the tourney. It would be hard to drive 2 hours back to Carbondale from St. Louis on 2 lane roads for every game.

[Da Coach]

I saw huge number of cars streaming off the Interstate from Illinois, with Illinois license plates and people wearing SIU gear. I couldn't tell, of course, how far they'd come, but they weren't from St. Louis, they were from Illinois.
And the campus of SIU has a total enrollment of close to 20,000 students.

http://news.siu.edu/news/September05/090705sd5039.jsp

It's not like there are many other Division I schools in the area to compete with, there are none (St. Louis U. is 2 hours away and not really much of a competetor for fan support in Carbondale's area). Even U of Illinois is not big down there, there may be more Missou fans. And there are few other sports or entertainment options this time of year to compete with.
They should be able to fill a 9600 seat arena easily. It is still a mystery why they can do it for some games, but have a half empty arena for others.

[audacious_aficionado]

a group of us were followed out of the stadium by a couple drunk siu fans. we had to walk all the way to the arch practically to our car and they kept telling us that we should have Buescher as our head coach instead of assistant. they were pretty convinced that because Buescher had won state as a high school coach, he deserved to be our head coach at bradley. i don't think they understood that having livingston and ruffin on a high school team together automatically wins state regardless of coaching staff. They wanted Les fired and Buescher put in because then "we would surely be in the top 15 teams in the nation every year".

[Lakeview Brave]

I think a lot of SIU grads live in and around the St. Louis area which explains the large contigent of SIU fans at the tourney. It would be hard to drive 2 hours back to Carbondale from St. Louis on 2 lane roads for every game.

No excuse! If driving 2 1/2 hours in traffic on I55 and then driving home the same night is possible, then they can do it to.

[houstontxbrave]

In all the years I have been going to the MVC tourney and that is every year but this season and the year of Deons shot I have never had any problems or situations with any other teams fans other then last season.

I was sitting in the last row of the BU section so the luxury boxes were directly above us. I beleive I was actually sitting next to squirell, I think... anyway Creighton fans were in the box above us.

I have never ever heard more rude, unbehavied, classless people in my entire life. Not only were they disgustingly offensive towards BU and our players but they were vulgar the entire game.

I understand that it was a very small fraction of their fan base but that small fraction has left this BU fan with the impression that CU fans are rude classless individuals. That experience with their fans for that one game left me with a life time impression of their entire fan base.

[amckillip]

In all the years I have been going to the MVC tourney and that is every year but this season and the year of Deons shot I have never had any problems or situations with any other teams fans other then last season.

I was sitting in the last row of the BU section so the luxury boxes were directly above us. I beleive I was actually sitting next to squirell, I think... anyway Creighton fans were in the box above us.

I have never ever heard more rude, unbehavied, classless people in my entire life. Not only were they disgustingly offensive towards BU and our players but they were vulgar the entire game.

I understand that it was a very small fraction of their fan base but that small fraction has left this BU fan with the impression that CU fans are rude classless individuals. That experience with their fans for that one game left me with a life time impression of their entire fan base.

Hmm, both times they have been in town since I've been here they have been very friendly and fairly good sports, the only real fans that have left a sour taste in my mouth were UNI fans after there win this year, They were pretty rude and shouting at students after the game, though I realize this was again a pretty small portion. I think the only fans I truly dislike as a whole are IU and Duke fans, but thats just because they made poor poor decisions to be a fan of those two schools(especially IU, I HATE Bob Knight and Kelvin Sampson, at least up until this year I respected Coach K).