When it comes to student attendance, Chris Beard is slowly but surely changing Texas basketball culture – The Daily Texan
Finance senior Spencer Van Gelder was one of the students denied entry. Saturday’s game was the first time that he was turned away from the Frank Erwin Center.
“We went to the student section entrance,” Van Gelder said. “At that gate, they told us that they weren’t letting any more students in.”
For Texas, a full student section is almost unheard of. The last time a men’s basketball game sold out was in 2016, when Texas hosted No. 1 Kansas.
After Saturday’s 52-51 win over Tennessee, Beard thanked the fans that sold out the Drum for affecting the outcome of the game.
“Today’s crowd was the best in college basketball,” Beard said. “There might have been one as good, but there wasn’t one better and they helped us win the game.”
Beard has gone out of his way to incentivize students to show up to games and build a home-court advantage. The head coach visited multiple fraternity houses in the preseason, hosted a party at the UT tower for the student body in November and hosted an event on campus called “Coach Beard and Coach Beard,” interviewing actor Brendan Hunt from the popular TV show Ted Lasso.
The program also continues to provide freebies for students that show up to games. Free breakfast tacos were given out to the first 500 students that showed up to the Jan. 22 game against Oklahoma State, which had 13,203 people in attendance. The Erwin Center’s total capacity is 16,540.
Beard is slowly but surely building up a basketball culture at Texas that aims to compare to blue blood programs like Kansas and Kentucky. He and his team have already experienced the environment of a “basketball school” — loud and sold-out student sections.
Texas’ game against Gonzaga was a “tent city” game for the Bulldogs with students camping out days in advance of the game to secure their seats inside the arena.