Perhaps the biggest difference between last season's Southern Conference in basketball and this season has been in the seats.
According to the numbers, there haven't been as many empty ones in the arenas.
Attendance at both home and away games has gone up this year, in part due to the additions of East Tennessee State, Mercer and Virginia Military Institute. The three new programs have combined to average 2,718 fans per game this season, which has helped the average attendance around the league increase by 137 fans per game.
Wofford's success last season has helped the Terriers, who've had an increase of more than 600 fans at home games from last season to this. The Terriers returned everybody from an NCAA tournament team, which squarely put the target on their backs prior to the season.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Mercer, ETSU and Western Carolina have been improved, competitive programs, and the five teams at the top of the conference standings have beaten up on each other throughout the season.
"There's great balance in this league," Wofford coach Mike Young said Tuesday. "We have really good players and the league has been competitive. Mercer has brought a lot to the league, as have ETSU and VMI; it's as competitive of a league as I recall in a long time. We have really good basketball, and fans across the league's footprint have recognized that, and they've come out and enjoyed that at the games."
Said UTC coach Will Wade: "With the league race being a little closer this year, there's more familiarity with the teams."
Perhaps the biggest factor has been Mercer, which uses social media to promote its program as much if not more than anybody in the conference. The excitement over the Bears' upset of Duke in the 2014 NCAA tournament has carried over this season. They've had an attendance increase of more than 700 fans at home games from last season to this. They've also taken their act on the road, sending two buses on a trip from Macon, Ga., to Spartanburg, S.C. -- a distance of 432 miles round-trip according to Google Maps.
Bears fans are planning to bring a bus from Macon to Chattanooga for Thursday's game against UTC.
"They have a good basketball base that's very organized," Wade said Monday. "They work very hard at it; hopefully we'll have a good turnout."
Despite the impending weather, it should be a well-attended game between the conference's second- and third-place teams at McKenzie Arena. Both teams average more than 2,000 fans at away games, and more than 3,000 at their home venues.
UTC point guard Greg Pryor said the team's improvement over the past couple of seasons has helped paint a "bull's-eye" of sorts on the Mocs when they've hit the road this season. The Mercer game was a "blackout," and Wofford had a student section that extended 25 rows up. Western Carolina had its largest home attendance of the season when the Mocs played there on Feb. 7.
Pryor said after the first Mercer game that the fact the UTC game matters to opponents is a good sign for the future of the program.
"We've been developing into a pretty good team," he said. "We talked about needing to get used to these environments. We want to keep going forward and be able to play these types of games every night, instead of teams going back to just playing 'Chattanooga' every night, like it's no big deal."
In the near future, it doesn't seem like that'll be a problem -- for the Mocs or any other team in the Southern Conference.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.