The George Washington University women’s basketball team is ranked #8 in the country by the AP, riding a 14-game winning streak to a 21-2 record. They’re undefeated in conference play, and have only lost to then #1 Maryland and then #5/6 Tennessee, and beat then #10/11 and current #9 Georgia. The team includes the Adair twins from Anacostia – 6’4 Jessica, who leads the team in scoring, and 6’3 Jazmine. But only 661 people per game go see the Colonials at home, barely a tenth of the Smith Center’s capacity. Now some people just don’t like the women’s game – it’s not as fast as the men’s version usually and doesn’t have the same dipsy-doo dunkaroo that Dick Vitale talks about, but it’s also generally more fundamentally sound.

This team has a lot going for it – they have been in the top 25 since November. Coach Joe McKeown has more than 400 wins in 18 years at GW and has never had a losing season in Foggy Bottom. The team is NCAA tourney bound again, having gone in 13 of the last 16 seasons. And the games are held near the Metro, with cheap tickets – $9 each and groups of 10 or more for $1 each. But GW’s average home attendance ranks 9th out of 14 teams in the conference, above only Duquesne, Fordham, LaSalle, St. Louis, and St. Bonaventure. GW has only topped 1000 fans once, while Bonaventure has done it twice.

It’s not as if women’s basketball in the area can’t draw fans – the Mystics led the WNBA in attendance for six seasons, despite some controversy, and the Terps draw almost 9000 (though both play in bigger arenas). But even given their larger arenas, those numbers indicate that people in the D.C. area do like women’s basketball. So why aren’t they at the Smith Center?

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