underdawg wrote:siudawgs wrote:Season ticket sales in Carbondale would have seen a similar spike if Mullins had been brought in to replace a certain polarizing media darling.
Might or might not happened--but I just did a Pearson correlation matching number of wins and attendance for the last 28 years of Saluki Basketball;
There is a +.73 correlation between average attendance and number of wins in a season/ I then did one using percentage of capacity and wins (SIU has had a 10,000 seat version and now an 8400 version so using % of capacity might be more representative). That correlation was a bit lower (+.63) but still significant. winning correlates with attendance not (in the long run) coaching hires. You might get a one or two year uptick but that's it--you have to win. Mullins is no exception.
If I were to make a case of an external factor damaging SIU's ticket sales, it would be around the chaos happening in the academic units along with lack of economics to keep Saluki fans in the region. I don't think some of Hinson's interviews helped but it's also worth noting the state cuts, administrative chaos, and economy have hurt.
I made the statement that SIU had bigger issues than Barry Hinson when the debate over whether to keep him or hurt him was raging. I just didn't dream that I'd be proven right like I was.
I'm not saying this to nullify other facts people brought up like his barely above .500 record at SIU or the fact that he hasn't made an NCAA Tournament as a head coach. Just saying SIU has much worse problems outside basketball. Indeed, if Hinson had a much better record and had made NCAA's while he was here, this is the kind of chaos that could justify him going somewhere else.
