Friday, Feb. 6, 2004 | 10:47 a.m.
ALBUQUERQUE -- It's a Saturday night in January, and traffic in the right-hand lane on Interstate 25 near downtown Albuquerque is backed up as far as the eye can see. Cars of all makes and models and lots and lots of pickup trucks are slowly rolling past Presbyterian Hospital, about a mile from the Avenida Cesar Chavez exit (formerly Stadium Boulevard), which can mean only one thing:
The University of New Mexico women's basketball team is playing a home game.
The Lobos women are the biggest thing to hit the Duke City since the the Navajo taco and Brian Urlacher. They're a good team in a mid-major conference but when it comes to popularity at home, they are second to none.
Actually, that's an exaggeration, but only a tiny one. Last year, New Mexico ranked fourth in NCAA attendance with an average of 11,896, trailing only Tennessee, Connecticut and Texas Tech, national powers that have combined for 11 NCAA championships.
If Saturday's sellout throng of 18,018 at The Pit against UNLV was any indication, the Lobos may improve on that number this year. The UNLV game, on "Pack the Pit" night, was the first of four promotions featuring reduced tickets for $4.
"We'll sell out all four," said Joe Weiss, New Mexico's assistant athletic director of sales and marketing.
The passion and devotion of New Mexico fans in well documented, but their support of women's basketball is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1994-95, crowds at women's games could have arrived in same hot air balloon, as the Lobos had a grand total of nine season ticket holders.
Now, they've got more than 8,000.
Curiosity in the women's basketball team coincided with the arrival of Don Flanagan as coach. Flanagan, a former NAIA basketball standout at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., compiled an astounding 401-13 record and won 11 state championships in 16 years as girls coach at Albuquerque's Eldorado High School.
So when he was given the opportunity to resuscitate New Mexico's moribund program in 1995, Flanagan's name already was recognizable to Albuquerque basketball fans. In terms of sparking interest in the women's program, that was huge.
So was his success right off the bat.
Since Flanagan took over, the New Mexico women have compiled a 180-87 record (121-28 at home). The Lobos have won a conference regular-season championship, two conference tournament titles and have made six consecutive postseason appearances.
Attendance has increased exponentially as well, from an average of 3,501 in Flanagan's first year, to 11,896 last season.
Weiss said when it became apparent that the women's basketball team had piqued the interest of local fans, the marketing department took it to the next level with the Pack the Pit concept.
The first one, staged in Flanagan's first year, drew a crowd of 10,000. The turnouts grew with every passing year despite a raise in ticket prices, from a dollar and then $2 to the current $4.
Now, it's to where New Mexico can attract a crowd without reducing tickets. During the Flanagan era, the Lobos have played in front 41 crowds of 10,000 or more, including six this year.
Weiss, who had to shout to be heard over the roar of the crowd at Saturday's UNM-UNLV game, said the key to New Mexico's success has been creating a buzz in women's basketball within the community.
"Without that buzz, this doesn't happen," he said.
As for the marketing department's role, he said it doesn't take an edict from the laboratories up the road in Los Alamos to figure it out.
"It's not rocket science. Just a lot of hard work," he said.
Weiss, part of a staff of five, said New Mexico begins pounding the pavement on group sales for women's basketball just as soon as the football season ends. For Saturday's game against UNLV, 60 groups bought tickets in blocks of 25 to 1,000. That accounted for 7,000 of the 18,018 who were on hand. Season ticket sales were responsible for another 8,000.
That meant to achieve a sellout, Weiss and his staff had to attract a walk-up crowd of about 3,000. At New Mexico, where players are on a first-name basis with fans, that's a slam dunk.
"We hit up everybody (to purchase tickets)," he said. "In the week before the game, we're all over TV and the radio (with advertising spots). We get the players out in the community. Sometimes, the players will spend as much as three hours signing autographs."
In other words, what New Mexico has done is force-feed women's basketball to an Albuquerque community that refuses to push itself away from the table.
It has made the Lobos marketing department look like geniuses, although Weiss said he's still surprised every time he gets a call from another athletic department, asking how the Lobos have done it.
Last week, Tennessee, of all people, was on the line.
"They wanted to know how we were able to sell out our (NCAA) regional last year," Weiss said. "I asked them 'How could you not sell out?' "
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