Mike Hlas

Hi, I'm Gazette/TheGazette.com sports columnist Mike Hlas. This is the Hlog. We will meet here, discuss things, and then go [...]
Updated: 14 March 2012 | 12:51 am in Basketball, College and University, Hawkeye Basketball, Iowa Hawkeyes, Men's Basketball, Sports, The Hlog by Mike Hlas

Iowa had twice as many fans as any of the other eight NIT games Tuesday

Northwestern's NIT crowd Tuesday: 2,319


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NIT Fever was contained to one place in America Tuesday night, though the National Invitation Tournament had nine games from coast to coast.

That place? Iowa City, Iowa.

Walsh Gym, Seton Hall.

The Iowa-Dayton game drew a crowd of 13,190 hungry-for-postseason-basketball Hawkeye fans. It was the first postseason game Iowa had played since 2006, and the fans’ hunger was sated with the Hawkeyes’  84-75 triumph.

No two other NIT crowds Tuesday added up to as much as 11,447. Many were played in gyms that can’t hold 13,190 fans, but no one but Iowa had anything resembling a near-sellout. Well, Seton Hall played its game in its 2,600-seat Walsh Gym as opposed to the 18,000-seat Prudential Center in Newark that it usually uses. The Pirates were almost 1,000 shy of a sellout, though.

Iowa’s crowd was larger than the smallest five combined, as the following numbers detail:

The crowds:

Iowa  13,190 for Dayton

Tennessee  6,289 for Savannah State

Oregon 5,189 for LSU. Oregon hosts Iowa in the quarterfinals Sunday at 4 p.m., Central time.

Middle Tennessee State  4,556 for Marshall

Washington  2,801 for Texas-Arlington. Washington was the regular-season Pac-12 champion, and is the No. 1 seed in Iowa’s region.

Mississippi State  2,507 for Massachusetts

Northwestern  2,319 for Akron

Seton Hall  1,674 for Stony Brook

Stanford  1,339 for Cleveland State.

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