From the blacktop pickup games on the lakefront to the pristine hardwood of the United Center, basketball is in Chicago's blood.
Chicago's high schools have churned out high-profile players like Derrick Rose, Quentin Richardson, Shaun Pruitt, Shannon Brown and John Sheier. NBA stars who played ball in the Windy City include Hall-of-Famer Isiah Thomas, Kevin Garnett, Dwayne Wade and Antoine Walker. There were the Bulls of the 1990s, who won six titles on the shoulders of a giant. Michael "His Airness" Jordan dominated the NBA in Bulls' red and black for more than a decade, winning five MVP awards and six NBA Finals MVPs.
You get the point: Chicago and basketball go hand in hand. Even Loyola has some basketball heritage to speak of. In 1963, the men's basketball team broke race barriers and won an NCAA championship, the only to be won by an Illinois team.
I hope and pray that last paragraph wasn't earth-shattering news for you, but judging by the current state of Loyola's basketball fandom, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not referring to the team's 9-16 record (5-10 in the Horizon League. Yeesh.) or the fact that we can't make a 3-pointer to save our lives, but rather the attendance figures at the Gentile Center this year.
It's scary how low fan turnouts at Loyola home games are. The average attendance (except for the season opener against LeMoyne, which wasn't listed on loyolaramblers.com) at the Gentile Center is 1,680.
Now I can sit here and bitch about how fans don't go to the games and don't support the team and blah, blah, blah, but I can't really blame our fans one bit. The product on the floor is not that good (the numbers speak for themselves), and we're not playing high profile teams that would make you skip Lost for a little hoops action.
But at this university especially, the problem is not the team itself. Even last year when the Ramblers won 20 games it was hard to get people in the Gentile Center. No, the problem lies in the fact that nobody knows about the tradition of Loyola basketball.
You probably know about the 1963 national champions, but did you know that Loyola was in the NCAA Tournament in 1985 when Alfredrick Hughes led the Ramblers to the Sweet 16? Or the long and twisted history of Lu Wolf, the mascot? Or that we've had a player on Team USA? My guess is that you don't, and again, I can't blame you. How could you know when we never get any of this stuff from the Athletic Department. Their best effort this year was having the All-1960s at the Loyola-NIU game after finals week when most students were gone.
It makes me feel like our Athletic Department is too ready to move into the future, without really building the foundation for it. Alumni Gym and all the history that goes with it will probably be torn down, and a brand new training facility will be built in its place. The Gentile Center, the crowned jewel of Loyola sports (God knows why), will be the permanent house for all basketball and volleyball games.
Everything will be shiny and new, but people still won't care. They have no reason to care, no reason to be attached to the maroon and gold. My call to action goes out not to the fans who don't go, but to the Athletic Department that continues to ignore our history in favor of digital images of the new Halas Center.
Because someday we're going to feel pretty stupid when the last penny is spent and there are only 569 people watching Loyola lose to UIC again.
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