About 150 miles separate the campuses of NIU and Bradley University.

However, as far as basketball programs go, the two schools are not even near the same place.

It wasn’t so much the 76-67 win Saturday by the Braves that asserted this claim, but instead, the aftermath of the game that puts the situation into context.

In the Peoria Journal Star the following day, sports editor Kirk Wessler called out Bradley fans who did not show up for the game and the fans who seemed disinterested with the outcome.

He made mention of an alley-oop play by Bradley guard Phillip Gilbert and then mentioned that the Bradley fans had “spent their season quota of standing and cheering at the Bradley-ISU game Wednesday night.”

He also said the crowd needed a little boost and that the fans should have figured out how important a home court advantage was after Bradley’s win over Illinois State.

The only catch to this story, you ask?

The attendance for the game was 9,215.

For heaven’s sake – 9,215 people.

When counting attendance, schools can count seats sold, so this number may be high, but there were still a solid 7,000 people at Carver Arena in Peoria.

It must be nice to complain about a crowd of that size.

There were 9,744 people in attendance for Bradley’s last game against conference rival Illinois State.

That’s 18,959 people in two games.

In NIU’s past six home games, 18,155 people attended.

So, Bradley gets more people in two games than NIU gets in six, and people still complain?

Yes.

It is all about expectations.

Bradley is only a .500 team and people drive from all around central Illinois to watch them play a meaningless, non-conference game against a team that hasn’t won in over a month.

The Huskies can’t get people to drive across town to come even when they are winning.

At the beginning of the season when everyone thought NIU would carry the MAC, only 7,509 people showed up for the first two regular season games combined.

When it comes to attendance, basketball at NIU has a ways to go.

This is not because it hasn’t produced a decent product in recent years. Last season, NIU was tied for the top seed in the West Division and fought for a high seed in the conference tournament when division co-leader Central Michigan came to town. Only 6,813 people showed up for the game.

And it was the second-largest crowd to see a game at the Convocation Center since its opening.

The conclusion is that even if the team was good nobody would come.

Bradley has a rich tradition when it comes to basketball but hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since 1996.

NIU has prime recruiting location and a new arena that is better than Bradley’s, which isn’t even located on campus.

Whether NIU will ever be able to put people in the seats is anyone’s guess. But, as for now, NIU will get excited over 6,000 fans while Bradley will complain about 9,215.

What a difference 150 miles makes.