Indiana State Game of February 4, 2012

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

Anyone else hear the announcer call us Murry State at the 15:08 mark in the first half?

I missed it.

But I did not miss Craig Steven's calling our uniforms orange the other day

[boneshock]

I hope everyone is sending the complaints about the production to the proper outlets. When I ran the group, we have a script, as always, but we were free to play what we wanted. My rule was only play low brass in the 2nd half and if we were up and after a run-induced timeout. We were asked to play it while losing once, we lost a lot that year, and the headset told me to play it. I played the fight song instead and could see the glares from from behind Don Hall.

[ShockerPhi]

I haven't read every post in this thread but what's the average age of our crowd, 86? I am sick of people sitting on their hands for these games. I realize that I probably make a fool out of myself at times cheering and making noise but it helps our team. It seems that I am surrounded by people who don't even acknowledge the game?

I saw the crowd get on their feet multiple times when it was necessary/needed. I think the crowd did pretty well!

[KSUUWSU]

I don't get it sometimes. I lost track of how many "dirty looks" I got last night from people sitting on their hands. I brought my mini bullhorn and screamed my lungs out in section 119. I know there are a lot of blue hairs around but a lot of the sitters are young ones as well. I have my own photo collection of people just sitting there game after game. I thought of posting them but it wouldn't do any good. So for now, I will keep cheering and giving my own looks back at the sitters.

[ShockerFever]

MisManagement

Fixed.

[1972Shocker]

I will say one thing in defense of game management and keeping the fans engaged during timeouts. It is a much tougher job to do in these days of media tiemouts and checking the monitor for this or that. College games are much more broken up these days with 8 media timeouts, often preceded by a called timeout plus the occasional stoppage to look at the monitor. And when you actually are on TV the media timeouts seem to last longer. That's a lot of time to fill and a lot of energy required of the fans (regardess of age) to try and stay energized during all of that dead time.

I hate it when there is a called time-out say at the 15:45 mark. Then the teams come back out and there is a quck foul, turnover, etc. to stop play and they call media timeout at say the 15:30 mark.

No doubt there are some game management things we can improve on though. As far as using these multiple breaks to gin up some dollars I will have to plead ingorance on how necessary that is but remember Men's Basketball pretty much supports and entire athletic department. If those dollars are needed to help the team travel in style or especially to support the tough job of recruiting for the Coaches then I can certainly live with it and would not want them to give that up. That said I think with a little more creativity and effort you can do these things in a little more upbeat and entertaining way.

I will say the dance contests with the kids can be fun. The winner last night provided some energy for sure. A dominating performnce indeed.

[ShockerFever]

At one point, when the team made a nice run, the crowd was going nuts and ISU called a timeout. I was sitting right behind the band and they all started yelling to play the Low Brass Cheer. It went off and the student section and the arena just went nuts. It was so loud and the perfect timing. Then they went to an ad and the stupid dance cam and the energy in the building just disappeared. I get that ads pay the bills, but at times like that, where the atmosphere is electric, you have to just forget the ads and figure out another time to drop them in. Let the band keep playing and keep the energy going. At that point, we could have just done Low Brass Cheer the entire timeout and people would have yelled along the entire time.

No idea why the "under 4" timeout is Low Brass Cheer. It shouldn't have a set time. It should just flow organically. That's all I'm going to say, so as to not sound disparaging to anyone.

Audio/Video team and Marketing Management is the problem. Example: After a huge play last night, the band did do the low brass cheer off the cuff and the place was going bananas...it was then cut off to do the F#&*ing grasshopper dance-cam on the big screen...in which everyone sat down for fear of being the guy who can't dance.

There is a sponsored something for every timeout now. About 2 of 16 of them are funny or worth the time. I'm sure we're making money off of all of them, but it costs us the college basketball environment we used to have.

They play "popular" music over the audio system that only about 4% of the crowd even knows or appreciates. And also our wonderful media productions that just kills the crowd when the team is welcomed out on the court.

Get a freaking clue Shocker Athletics office.

"Popular" to who? The 14 and under crowd and gangstas? I simply can't believe that game production is so bad. The big video board is the worst investment the athletic department has ever made (considering the way it is used). The crowd was in a frenzy after the Shocks had a nice run of steals, run-outs, and layups. ISU-B calls a timeout and the video and music suck everyone back into their chairs. Un-freakin-believable.

To those in charge - take a step back and watch what's happening. You're failing.

--'85.

I hope everyone is sending the complaints about the production to the proper outlets. When I ran the group, we have a script, as always, but we were free to play what we wanted. My rule was only play low brass in the 2nd half and if we were up and after a run-induced timeout. We were asked to play it while losing once, we lost a lot that year, and the headset told me to play it. I played the fight song instead and could see the glares from from behind Don Hall.

I hope so too. I have emailed a few WSU representatives about it and have not garnered a response. It's gonna take more than 1 person to get it through to these brilloheads. I'm urging every poster on this board who is not satisfied with the current production of Shocker games (everyone minus im4wsu) to take some time out and email our fearless leader Eric Sexton or some form of the athletic department. We can ***** and moan about it here but it obviously is not doing any good if it doesn't go to the source. Paul Suellentrop is making his first subtle attempt to let the athletic department know with his latest blog entry. Now, it's up to everybody else. They can ignore a few, but can't ignore a legion. Even though I know for a fact, the WSU administration does view this site pretty frequently, they apparently don't give a rat's ***. EMAIL, MAIL, CALL, DO WHATEVER to get these morons either out of their jobs or change the status quo of suckatude. Sexton obviously doesn't have a clue so maybe we need to go higher up. I dunno. But whatever the case, it's FLAT OUT EMBARRASSING.

20-4, NCAA Tournament team, one of the best and most loyal fanbases in the world (when they show up) and look what we have portraying it? Dog poop. It needs to END. NOW.

Please Jim Schaus come back.

[ShockerFever]

I will say the dance contests with the kids can be fun. The winner last night provided some energy for sure. A dominating performnce indeed.

Couldn't disagree with you more here '72. We have about 10 dance-themed promotions or activities. It's overused, trite, and really boring. It sucks the energy out for the most part. I'd rather have the kiss cam back than the dance cam 20 times/game.

Mickey Mouse at its finest.

[ShockerPhi]

And the National Anthem..............JC..........can you just sing it the way it was written?????

Don't hate. My friend sang it tonight.

[ShockerFever]

Everyone might have a legitimate reason from time-to-time to miss a game, and that doesn't bother me. There are clearly a multitude of more important things in folks' lives that should take precedence over a basketball game.

What I'm most irked about is what's going on in section 108. There are several rows where there are consisitently 6 or 8 or 10 seats in a row that are empty. These are corporate seats going unused. You can say whatever about how they have donated to the program/we need them/blah-blah-blah but I say BS. If the tickets are going to be unused, give those folks upper bowl, the endzone etc. They don't go anyway, they sometimes give them to people who buy cars or furnaces or their golf buddies.

If nothing else, have an assistant AD or marketing person go up to row 30 and invite some of those people to to move down at the first media timeout. I promise you the people who are yelling their lungs out from the nosebleed sections will represent.

--'85.

BTW, I'm not doing this for me. Our seats are great and we've been to nearly every home game since the days when we had to camp out in tents for tickets and ... gasp ... pay for student tickets.

Agreed. This is another department blunder IMO. This also goes hand in hand with the student section. I like some of the ideas of having to use your tickets by a certain time or a reselling for $10 should happen. A sold out student section last night.. with 200 empty seats. God-AWFUL. Shame on the students who took tickets but didn't show up. EMBARRASSING.

Something has to be done about the empty corporate seats though. I dunno how you solve it, but it has to be done.

We had it so good 6 years ago with the student section and the athletic department. Our teams are now back to that high level, but everything else has hit the fan.

[1972Shocker]

Couldn't disagree with you more here '72. We have about 10 dance-themed promotions or activities. It's overused, trite, and really boring. It sucks the energy out for the most part. I'd rather have the kiss cam back than the dance cam 20 times/game.

Mickey Mouse at its finest.

I wasn't talking about the dance cam.

[shox1989]

I haven't read every post in this thread but what's the average age of our crowd, 86? I am sick of people sitting on their hands for these games. I realize that I probably make a fool out of myself at times cheering and making noise but it helps our team. It seems that I am surrounded by people who don't even acknowledge the game?

I thought the crowd was very dead the first half, but got a lot better during the second half.

My area, however, as usual was dead the whole game. I think the 9pm start time was past most of their bedtimes.

I understand the need for money and sponsors, but they need to have some flexibility to the script. When our team is doing well, the other team calls a time out and the crowd is jumping, they need to change the script and allow the band to play the low brass cheer or something else that keeps the crowd charged up throughout that particular time out.

There are tons of time outs any more so there is lots of time do get their promotions in (I would still move some of them to half time or at least keep that as a back up option depending on how the game is going).

Playing the low brass cheer and then following it up with some crowd killing promotion within the same time out is just plain stupid.

[Shoxfan11]

The BatWu video has been gone over and over again, but its timing is also horrible. The players are shown entering the tunnel, rallying each other up, the crowd gets energized to cheer them on, the players are ready to get out on the court, but no.....STOP. It's the BatWu video. The crowd quites (or moans) and we wait.

If this video must be shown, do it earlier, please.

100% agree. Remember how loud it used to be when the team came out of the tunnel? Nowadays we're lucky to get about half of that noise.

[ShockBand]

OTCWK! Occupy The Chuck With Kazoos! We will be heard!

BTW, do you think they would really boot a few hundred of us over kazoos, even though it is technically against the rules?

[shox1989]

I am watching a DVR of the game right now, it is funny how many times the announcer called this a "rivalry game". I didn't know Indiana State was our rival.

Of Course he also called us Murry St. once too.