There is something wrong with Ohio State men’s basketball, and for once it has nothing to do with Serbians, postseason bans or multimillion dollar lawsuits. No, the problem isn’t on the court or in the courtroom, but rather in the burgundy seats that surround Value City Arena – or, more specifically, the lack of warm rear ends in those seats.

Saturday’s game against No. 14 Iowa, in which nearly 5,000 of the 19,500 seats were left cold, begs the question: Why is it so hard to fill the Schottenstein Center, and what can be done to fix it?

The Jerome Schottenstein Center opened in time for the 1998 school year as a replacement for the cozy and historic – but badly out of date – St. John Arena.

The Schott impressed nearly everyone with its amenities and its versatility as it became home to concerts, OSU hockey, and the 1999 men’s Final Four team, among other things. But for all of its big-city luster, critics argued that the Schott would forever miss what was so abundant in St. John Arena for over four decades: a distinct home court advantage.

After six years of empty seats and pin-dropping silence, it seems the critics might have been right.

I know, even when the Schott sells only 70 percent of its seats for a basketball game, it still has more fans than St. John Arena did when filled to the brim. And yes, I’m aware attendance for the men’s team ranked 18th nationally last year as an average of over 14,000 Buckeye fans flowed through the turnstiles for every game, including the non-conference thrillers against teams like Hollywood Upstairs Medical College and Columbus School for Girls that seem to pepper the schedule from November to January. But I’m a glass-is-half-empty type, so forget all that stuff.

If coach Thad Matta is serious about restoring the program to national prominence, he needs our help in the stands.

Fortunately, there are a couple of easy ways to turn the Schott from sterile and cavernous to raucous and intimidating.

First, we need to get people to think basketball. At $13, it’s cheaper to go to a men’s basketball game now than it was to go to the Fairgrounds and see the old Columbus Chill play crappy minor league hockey just a few years ago.

So why aren’t people buying tickets? Because they don’t know they can walk up on a dreary February night and see big-time college basketball for just a few bucks. They forget about the Tuesday evening game against Minnesota or the Sunday afternoon tilt versus Michigan.

Find a way to get a basketball schedule on the family refrigerator, and you’ve got yourselves some fans. Keep on winning, and that’ll take care of itself.

Most importantly, something needs to be done about the students. The student ticket packages for men’s basketball are a joke. Four Big Ten games and two non-conference games isn’t good enough to entice purchases from students, especially considering $60 can buy a lot of Natural Light and junior bacon cheeseburgers.

Instead of cutting the Big Ten Season in half and making the students decide which games they want to attend, change the package to include all Big Ten home games, keep the prices the same, and for the love of God, move the student section from behind the basket to the sides of the court.

Whatever revenue might be lost from restructuring the student ticket package would be made up by the increased success of the team. Get the students close enough to smell the mousse in Gene Keady’s “hair” and watch the conference wins pile up. More students would buy tickets, and the lawyer with the personal seat license would only have to move back a few rows.

From where we stand today, I think it’s safe to say a little bit of change might not be a bad thing for the Buckeyes. This team needs an identity that’s separate from the old Jim O’Brien regime. (How about bringing back those gray jerseys, for example?)

The next few years will begin an era in OSU basketball that looks more promising as the weeks go by, and we need to get the Schott to sound more like the ‘Shoe.

After all, the school with the most students should make the most noise, right? See you at the Schott.

Scott Woods is a junior in pre-journalism. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].