South Carolina basketball announced a sellout of Sunday's game against the Ole Miss Rebels, and the capacity crowd was the third sellout for the Gamecocks this season. Dawn Staley's team also sold out the previous home game against Vanderbilt and the upcoming game against UConn next week.
South Carolina basketball leads the country in average attendance every season, and that has continued in the 2023-2024 campaign.
On the season, South Carolina basketball fans have shown up to watch Dawn Staley's team at a record-setting pace. Colonial Life Arena has averaged 16,122 fans in attendance per game this season (with another 18,000+ sellout coming next week). Never before have so many fans come out to see the Gamecocks, and no women's college basketball program has had such a large number of their fans come to games this century.
The all-time record for average attendance belongs to the 1999 Tennessee Lady Volunteers who saw 16,565 fans walk through the turnstiles each night. That mark is extremely impressive, but it is important to mention that Thompson-Boling Arena is one of the few venues even larger than Colonial Life Arena.
The record will fall easily if USC has a sellout in each remaining game on the schedule. In fact, considering the sellouts against Ole Miss and UConn already set, if the Gamecocks average 17,000 fans per game down the stretch, Carolina will be right in line to match Tennessee's record.
USC already owns the all-time record for total attendance in a season, bringing in over 244,000 people to CLA in 2015-2016. South Carolina and Tennessee own all ten of the top-10 total attendance and average attendance seasons of all-time.
With 15 regular season games and the (very likely) potential of two NCAA Tournament games in Columbia, South Carolina basketball seems like a virtual lock to break their own total attendance record, but they are tantalizingly close to the average attendance record, as well.
Gamecock fans have proven this time and time again, but when the product on the floor is good, the fans show up in droves, and as the nation's lone undefeated and unanimous #1 team, the product on the floor couldn't be better.