Kansas guard Marcus Garrett (0) comes in to defend against a shot from West Virginia forward Emmitt Matthews Jr. (11) during the first half, Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020 at Allen Fieldhouse.
Thanks to some red hot shooting from the outside and lockdown defense in the second half, the third-ranked Kansas men’s basketball team did not need its home crowd of 2,500 fans to help pull it through another down-to-the-wire war with West Virginia.
But if the Jayhawks had needed the extra energy from their home fans, Kansas coach Bill Self believed it would have been there.
“I thought the crowd was great,” Self said. “I thought it was by far the best atmosphere we’ve had so far this year, and certainly much better than what we had against Creighton, which would be our other big home game so far.”
For that one, back on Dec. 8, the Jayhawks endured a 60-40 split in the stands, with hundreds of Creighton fans showing up and loudly cheering for their team to bring home a signature road win.
Kansas survived, of course, but Self said that night that he hoped KU fans would not sell their tickets online to anyone who wants them.
Morgantown, W.Va., is a long ways from Lawrence, so it was always unlikely that very many Mountaineer fans would be in the building on Tuesday night. But even if they had been, the 2,500 Kansas fans who were able to attend KU’s fifth home game of the season — and the third with roughly 15% capacity allowed by county health officials — made it clear early that they had their team’s back.
“I was excited with the crowd,” Self said. “And even though the crowd didn’t like pull us through when it’s a tie game late or whatever, if we’d have been in that situation, they could have made a difference. I think it was potentially good enough that that could have been the case tonight.”
Perhaps the most telling part about how much of an impact Tuesday’s crowd made was the fact that Self said he thought there were more than 2,500 fans in the building. Of course, there was a strategic reason for that.
“It actually looked a lot more crowded to me because of the cutouts,” said Self with a laugh of the $60 cardboard cutouts fans purchased before the season that helped fill the lower sections of Allen Fieldhouse. “I thought the cutouts made it look like that there was 5,000 or 6,000 people there, which I guess there was, if you count the cutouts. But I thought the crowd was great.”
KU officials have announced that the limited capacity mark of 2,500 fans at KU’s men’s and women’s home basketball games will be in place through Jan. 2.
After that, the university’s Pandemic Medical Advisory Team will continue to evaluate the pandemic in Lawrence and the surrounding areas to make a decision about how many fans can be allowed inside Allen Fieldhouse — or if they’re allowed at all — on a weekly basis throughout the rest of January.
The Kansas men host Texas for an 11 a.m. tipoff on Jan. 2.
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