Cal Basketball: Chronic Losing Has Led to The Nation's Lowest Home Attendance

I wrote earlier this season about poor attendance at Cal basketball games and coach Mark Fox referenced it in a post-game news conference later that week, suggesting it was insulting to the Bears’ fanbase.

Nice try, but the point of the story, obviously, was that the team’s chronically poor play over a half-dozen seasons has convinced otherwise loyal fans to stay home.

Saturday is the Bears’ annual senior day, where fans will say goodbye to Joel Brown, Lars Thiemann and Kuany Kuany. For the players' sake, hopefully there will be a nice crowd for the 2 p.m. tipoff vs. Washington State, but only 1,329 fans showed up Thursday to watch the Bears' 65-56 loss to Washington.

It’s hard to blame folks for saying no thanks to Cal basketball at this point. The team is slogging through the worst season in program history, now 3-25 overall and 2-15 in the Pac-12 after 12 consecutive defeats.

The Bears already have lost more games than anytime in more than 100 years, and they are threatening to win fewer than in any previous season.

The players, to their credit, have not quit on themselves or their coach. But they have to be beaten down emotionally, and they simply cannot get over the hump.

Fox’s team ranks last in in the Pac-12 in virtually every meaningful statistical category, including average margin of defeat: 11.4 points. That means few games have been competitive or entertaining.

But the most damning statistic is this: Cal ranks last in home attendance, drawing an average of just 2,182 fans to 16 games at Haas Pavilion, which has a capacity of 11,858.

Not just last in the Pac-12 . . . last among the 76 schools in the Power 5 conferences plus the Big East.

Even Louisville, which is dealing with an historically bad 4-24 season, is pulling in 12,535 fans per game -- nearly six times what Cal has attracted.

Here are the schools in each of those conferences drawing the lowest attendance (team in each conference in parenthesis):

— ACC (15): Georgia Tech 4,628

— Big East (11): DePaul 4,011

— Big Ten (14): Northwestern 4,764

— Big 12 (10): TCU 6,067

— Pac-12 (12): Cal 2,182

— SEC (14): Ole Miss 6,084

As you can see, it’s not even close.

This has been coming since Cal began its run of six straight losing seasons for the first time in program history.

Here are the Bears’ annual average home attendance figures since the 2015-16 season, when they most recently made it to the NCAA tournament with a roster that featured Jaylen Brown, Ivan Rabb, Tyrone Wallace and Jordan Mathews. (Win-loss records in parenthesis):

2015-16: 10,182 (23-11)

2016-17: 9,307 (21-13)

2017-18: 7,376 (8-24)

2018-19: 5,627 (8-23)

2019-20: 6,012 (14-18)

2020-21: 0* (9-20)

2021-22: 4,746 (12-20)

2022-23: 2,182 (3-25)

* Fans were not permitted to attend games in 2020-21 because of the COVID-19 pandemic

For all of the reasons things have spiraled this badly out of control -- some of them not Mark Fox's fault -- Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton has to recognize the mess this has become and what he must do about it.

His men’s basketball program has reached the low point in its century-long existence. Worse yet, Cal fans have stopped paying attention.

Cover photo of Cal coach Mark Fox by D. Ross Cameron, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo