BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s basketball team posted the third largest increase in average attendance from the previous year in figures announced by the NCAA on Tuesday.
The Tigers rose to 37th in the country in average attendance at 10,373. LSU was one of 43 Division I schools to average at least 10,000 fans, and showed an increase of 1,808 in paid attendance over 2007-08. LSU averaged 8,565 during the 2008 basketball season.
Texas Tech had a change of 2,330 for tops in the category with Oakland second at plus-2,074. LSU was the only SEC school listed among the 20 the NCAA listed in that category.
LSU posted a 27-8 record and a league championship mark of 13-3, advancing to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. In the eight home league games, LSU’s paid attendance average was 12,034.
The league set a total attendance conference record high for 227 games of 2,638,852 or an average of 11,625. The Big Ten was the only league to have a higher average attendance at 12,519.
Kentucky was again the national leader at 22,239.