It's become a cliché to say it's all about basketball in 49 other states, but this is Indiana.
But IU basketball fans proved this winter that there is merit in expression.
The IU men's basketball team had 296,427 fans attending games during the 2023-24 season, the highest attendance in the Big Ten and the sixth-highest attendance in the nation.
Meanwhile, the IU women's basketball team had 175,105 players attend the game, second-most in the Big Ten and fifth-most in the nation.
Nearly 500,000 total fans (472,132) were the largest combined attendance of any school in the NCAA for boys and girls.
This is the second year in a row that the IU men lead the Big Ten in attendance. Ranked in the top 10 nationally for three consecutive years.
Since Assembly Hall opened in 1971-72, IU's men have ranked among the top 10 programs 40 times and led the Big Ten in that category 24 times. The Hoosiers had the highest attendance in the nation during their undefeated 1976 National Championship season with 16,892 fans. IU's highest average total attendance was in 2012-13, when 17,412 people attended 19 home games for a team that was ranked No. 1 in the nation for most of the season. And won the outright Big Ten title. The Hoosiers ranked fifth in the nation in attendance that year.
IU women's basketball attendance has increased significantly since Terry Moren came to Bloomington.
The program has had an increase in average attendance from the previous year in six of Molen's 10 seasons. The only exceptions were the coronavirus-impacted season and the season after the WNIT Championship. This season, Indiana averaged 10,038 fans per game for him. This is his fifth time in Big Ten women's basketball history that a team has averaged more than 10,000 fans. In Moren's first season, the Hoosiers averaged just 2,609 points per game.
Daily Hoosier – “Where Indiana fans gather when they’re not at a rally.”