Soft Pretzel Logic

Fred asks:

So was the event a success? Sounds like the quality of play was solid for a few games, but nothing special overall.

The attendance appeared to be good for only 1 session (friday night). I didnt see the Inky mention the attendance fof the Sat evening session. So I saw it on yahoo. Listed at 3871. Given the propensity to "bump up the numbers", how many people were really in the gym? 3000 maybe?

I go back to my post the other day, where I mentioned the promotion of the event was pretty weak. No local buzz was generated on the radio, Comcast SportsNet, etc.

I give these guys credit for trying, but schools like Howard and Navy and Robert Morris just dont cut the mustard.

Will one of the local writers be doing a post-tourney debrief on the success/long term viability of the event?

Great job with the updates all weekend long!

Well thanks, first of all. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't know whether the event was really "a success" or not. I don't think it was a failure, if that makes sense. The teams all wanted to be there and appreciated the idea and importance of playing in the Palestra, and that includes Virginia and Seton Hall.

The basketball was never going to be the most aesthetically pleasing of all the tournaments this past week, but you get what you get when you put together a tournament of all Eastern teams with only two from BCS conferences.

I'm willing to go with the geographic model for putting a tournament together, because it being over Thanksgiving weekend you want to get fan bases that won't have to travel too much to get to Philadelphia so that more of them will show up.

At the same time, it's fair to want some higher-profile teams to show up. Villanova will help take care of that next year, and St. Joe's the year after, and if the thing survives I wouldn't be surprised if other teams start wanting to play in it.

(Don't go expecting the Syracuses and Connecticuts of the world, though. Not even something like this could get them out of their states before January 1.)

On the whole, I'd rather see the thing be a week earlier, because then the local schools' students are around and would help fill the seats. And if you get teams like Loyola and Seton Hall that are within a decent drive, their students might come too.

Believe it or not, though, I'm not so sure the attendances were inflated. I'm usually with you on that, but they sound about right this time. I did find the other numbers:

-- Friday afternoon: 1,073 (box score)
-- Friday night: 5,083 (box score)
-- Saturday afternoon: 1,031 (box score)
-- Saturday night: 3,871 (box score)

You're also right about the lack of buzz. We'll see if that changes next year, because who knows what the marketing budget for this thing was. I'm sure the Inquirer and Daily News (and Philly.com, for that matter) would gladly have taken some advertisements if the promoters wanted to stump up the money.

So that's probably as much as you're going to get as a "debrief." I suppose that we'll all find out together if this thing succeeds in the long term or not.