Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes keep bringing a crowd as Big Ten tourney fills up black and gold

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The queue began at breakfast time, about nine hours before Iowa played in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals, when black-and-gold-clad fans with general admission tickets determined to secure the best possible seats started camping out in the skyway outside Target Center

There’s more to the show than just Caitlin Clark, but she sure has brought a crowd as her college career with the third-ranked Hawkeyes winds down.

“It’s just so fun to see, all the excitement even at away games,” said Nicole Moyes, who with her husband David Moyes stood in the front of one of the lines set up outside the doors on Friday morning long before Iowa took the court for the evening session in the tournament quarterfinals.

The Moyeses live in Coralville, just 4 miles from Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and have had season tickets for four years — well-timed with the arc of Clark’s career. Before she came, the Moyeses recalled, curtains were pulled down to make the place look and feel less empty.

“You could sit wherever you wanted basically,” Nicole Moyes said.

Tricia Moeller mentioned that, too. She attended six home games this season and made the three-hour drive from the Des Moines area to Minneapolis to meet friend Barb Ernst, an Iowa native now living in Minnesota. Moeller’s black T-shirt read in gold block lettering, “Carver North.”

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“There’s no other event I’ve been to that’s so dynamic, from the second you walk in,” said Moeller, herself a former high school basketball player. “It’s not just Caitlin. They’re such a unit and have been the last few years. That’s what makes going to the games so fun.”

The Big Ten Tournament sold out almost two weeks ago, with an expected total attendance (109,000) for the five-day event more than double the 2023 total (47,923) at the same venue.

Advance ticket buyers were required to purchase all-session packages, which helped the league fill more seats for the early-round games and guaranteed fans of the Hawkeyes — and/or Clark — a spot for their entire trip through the bracket.

Iowa fans have had a significant presence at all of the games, regardless of who’s playing. The “Let’s go Hawks!” chant broke out right before the opening tip against Penn State on Friday night, once the main attraction finally arrived. When the doors opened, the blocks-long lines snaked through the downtown skyway system.

Last year’s crowds were lively, too, with a Big Ten Tournament record 9,505 fans reported for Iowa’s win over Ohio State in the championship game. The Hawkeyes reached the NCAA title game later that spring, creating even more momentum for this year as Clark’s global profile grew further.

Holding the conference tournament one state away from Iowa for Clark’s final two seasons has been quite the boon for a league that’s about to swell to 18 members next year with the arrival of Oregon, UCLA, Southern California and Washington.

“Timing is everything,” Big Ten chief operating officer Kerry Kenny said.

The conference has been closely examining ways it can sustain the interest in its brand of women’s basketball after Clark departs, with the success of and support for programs beyond Iowa — namely Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska and Ohio State — providing plenty of optimism that it will.

“It’s making sure that it’s not just this fleeting moment in time, but that you’re actually using this to attract new fans and younger fans who are going to like what they see and come back year after year regardless of where the tournament is,” said Kenny, who noted that the games on Thursday gave the Big Ten Network its highest ratings for a second-round broadcast in the history of the event.

Requests for proposals covering the next four years are pending for cities vying to host the tournament. The two-year visit to Minneapolis has clearly helped build a foundation for wherever it goes in the future.

“It’s a great basketball town and we’ve been thrilled to see it be a launching pad for us,” Kenny said.

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AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball