BATON ROUGE — LSU’s paid and actual crowds Saturday night for the 14th-ranked Tigers nationally-televised victory over Connecticut both ranked in the top 10 attendance figures for the ten years of John Brady‘s coaching tenure.
LSU’s 66-49 victory over the 18th-ranked Huskies drew a paid total of 13,121 putting the game seventh in the John Brady era and the second largest paid attendance since the building was configured to its present capacity of 13,215 for men’s basketball prior to the 2005-06 season. Last season, LSU drew 13,468 paid for the LSU-Georgia game.
The top four paid attendances of the Brady era came in the 2000 season and many of the Top 20 for the 36-year history of the building occurred when the capacity of the building was over 14,000.
The actual scanner attendance of 12,023 was also the sixth best regular season actual attendance for an LSU home game in the Brady era and the second best in the Brady era for a non-conference regular season game behind the 13,488 who saw the LSU-Arizona game in 2000 in a bigger configured arena.
LSU has a paid average of 9,619 with eight home Southeastern Conference games remaining starting Saturday at 2 p.m. against Auburn, an increase of 1,828 from the same period a year ago. The Tigers are trying to improve their paid attendance average for the sixth consecutive year. LSU’s paid attendance average was 8,106 in 2001 and last year was 9,409.