COUGHLAN: For once, BU community comes through for men’s basketball

There was no way that they were going to fill Case Gymnasium.

No way. No how.

No way that Boston University fans were going to show up for a 5 p.m. men’s basketball game on a Friday. Not when they had a men’s ice hockey bout between BU and Merrimack College for which to prepare at the same time.

Nope. Not without John Holland, and not without departed head coach Patrick Chambers.

They weren’t going to show up . . .

And then, they did.

Defying a precedent as old as the venue itself, Boston University basketball fans packed The Roof on Friday for the Terriers’ season opener against the Northeastern University Huskies, squeezing a sold out crowd of 1,875 into the rickety bleachers to set a program record for attendance at Case Gym.

I never thought I’d see the day. Not like this, at least.

With years upon years of lackluster attendance and lifeless crowds to back up the precedent that BU basketball would never have the strong following that it deserved – some may remember FreeP columnist Matt Whitrock’s argument that “[BU] doesn’t deserve [a basketball team]” because of the fans’ ignorance toward it – it was hard to imagine just a week ago that there were even enough people on the bandwagon to stand up to the well-traveled and coordinated NU student section.

With super-star 2010-11 Player of the Year John Holland done with his four years at BU and fan favorite Chambers having just slapped Terrier Nation in the face by taking the first ticket he received to Happy Valley, it seemed that the negatives associated with the home opener were beginning to outweigh the positives.

Then, when it was revealed that senior forward Jake O’Brien would miss the entirety of the 2011-12 season after having surgery on his foot, the words ‘rebuilding year’ came into focus all too quickly. In my head, the average attendance numbers that BU had built slowly but steadily over the last few years were sure to drop at the outset of 2011-12.

But then, the Terriers drew an opening night crowd more than 500 people greater than their America East counterpart, Stony Brook University, a team that has arguably the best chance at taking the conference championship this year.

So, why the big turnout? Or rather, why the record turnout? Any team can attract an above-average crowd for their first game in their own barn. Take last season’s home opener, for example. The game was the most-attended bout at The Roof all year, and yet there were still fewer than 1,000 butts in the seats.

Even considering 2002-03, the season following the Terriers’ last America East Championship, the spike in attendance on opening night (1,258 compared to 2001-02’s average of 868) hardly compares to last Friday’s crowd.

The sellout did more than blow those numbers out of the water; it very nearly doubled the Terriers’ average home attendance in 2010-11, 1,875 to 979.

And if The Roof wouldn’t have caved in as a result, who knows how many more hungry fans could have been satisfied?

But, the question still remains. Why?

I’m willing to bet that the majority of the rinky-dink hoopla surrounding the event was lost on many a BU fan. Prior to the game, BU Athletics announced that a ‘Fan Fest’ would be held outside The Roof one hour prior to tip-off, complete with giveaways and pizza.

While it’s hard for any college student to pass on the prospect of free stuff, I’ve seen it happen many a time in recent years, as promises of free jerseys and Terrier merchandise have not attracted the big crowds that were expected.

Similarly, any Terrier fan who attended Friday’s game behind the sole motivation of seeing the 2011 America East Championship banner rise to the rafters must have been sorely disappointed – no one came to The Roof on Friday with the sole intention of watching a by-the-way moment in which the banner was crookedly raised into history.

If they wanted the real thing, they should have been in Agganis Arena on March 12 for the court-rushing and the net-cutting and the trophy-lifting.

So, once we stop grasping in vain for an excuse as to why so many people came to watch basketball on Friday, the real reason can come to the forefront.

It seems to me that if you take away all of the star power and the drama, all of the free giveaways and the cheesy ceremonies, the only thing that Terrier basketball fans have left to show up for is just that, basketball.

And show up they did.

For the first time in a long time, it seems as if Terrier Nation is showing an honest interest in their basketball team and the story lines that surround it. Such a statistic can be measured not just in attendance figures, but in the deafening decibel level with which the Terrier fans cheered following senior guard Matt Griffin’s go-ahead trey with one minute remaining in regulation time and in the jungle-like heat and humidity levels inside Case Gym heading into overtime.

These fans are showing up for the impossible comeback, the hero vs. villain (Terrier vs. Husky) mentality, the buzzer-beating slam by senior forward Pat Hazel on an inbounds pass and the thrill that comes with a Division I college basketball game. Although they may not have gotten all of those things on Friday night, there is still plenty of basketball to be played, and this team is worth watching. Only time will tell if the fans that packed Case Gym on Friday will be back for more.

As the clock expired on the Terriers’ first loss of the season on Friday, the rabid and shirtless Husky fans that were in attendance began chanting the particularly nerve-tweaking sentence, ‘This is our house.’

The thing to remember about chants it that sometimes they are true, and sometimes they aren’t. Possibly one of the most embarrassing facts of life for the Terriers over their recent history has been that any opposing team’s fans could show up with a small group of organized people and take over BU’s home court advantage relatively unopposed. It was anybody’s house.

But this year, that is just not true, because for the first time in a long time, win or lose, Case Gymnasium belongs to Boston University.