Twelve seasons ago, Bill Fennelly was coaching his first season at Iowa State.

Immediately, without any success and on expectation alone, attendance for women’s basketball games more than doubled from an average of 733 fans per game in the 1994-95 season to 1,706 the next season. The rest is history.

The team started winning, and only four years into the Fennelly era, the Cyclones had an average attendance of over 6,000.

One year after that, at the turn of the millennium, the Cyclones had officially become a bona fide women’s basketball program. The average attendance during the 1999-2000 season was 11,184 – the fourth-highest in the nation.

Since 2000, the Cyclones have been among the top ten for attendance each year.

The Cyclones’ attendance has been a self-feeding, self-perpetuating cycle. Fennelly uses Hilton’s attendance to successfully recruit the best players and, in turn, the team continues to win, which brings a successful program and larger crowds, and then it goes back to the beginning with a recruiting selling point.

“Fennelly had mentioned the attendance when he was trying to get me to come here,” sophomore guard Denae Stuckey said. “When I actually played in front of it, I was like ‘wow, really, this is a lot of people, this is crazy.'”

Athletics Director Jamie Pollard chalks up the program’s successes to the character of Fennelly and Fennelly-coached teams, claiming it pays to be gracious.

“Clearly, it’s become a big tradition,” Pollard said. “Families come out in droves. A big part of it, I believe, is just how coach Fennelly and his team always are thankful to the fans. It’s fun, it’s exciting basketball and it’s just well-priced. It’s good family entertainment.”

Genesis Lightbourne is a sophomore on the team from Las Vegas. She recognizes the benefits of having a high-character coach as Pollard does and is grateful herself for the amazing crowd support.

“It means a lot just having the people there supporting you all the way – whether we’re up by 20 or down by 20, they’re cheering,” Lightbourne said. “As the program grows the team, tries to get out and do a lot more. And coach Fennelly does so much for the community and even outside of Ames, and outside of Iowa.”

Year in and year out, the Big 12 has the best fans in the nation.

Last season, the conference broke its own season attendance record for a season, leading the nation in attendance for the eighth year straight. Putting this into perspective, even though the Cyclones were seventh nationally in attendance last season, they were only third in the Big 12, trailing behind Texas Tech and Oklahoma.

“In the Big 12, women’s basketball has some of the best attendance in the country,” Pollard said. “So, by virtue of being in the Big 12, we are already putting ourselves in some of the best-run programs. But what I hear – I haven’t been to any road venues – I have yet to have anybody tell me it’s better anywhere else than it is here for women’s basketball.”

Comparing Big 12 women’s basketball to the sport in Australia is like comparing Kobe Bryant to Seth Gorney – it’s impossible. Just ask Cyclone starting point guard Alison “Aus” Lacey, who is from down under.

“It’s crazy here,” Lacey said. “I never thought it could happen – back home the National Grand Final would bring 5,000 people, so to play here in front of 10,000 is just crazy to me.”

This year, the Cyclones are once again on pace to finish among the top 10 in the nation in attendance. It’s safe to say Iowa State’s women’s basketball program has become one of the most successful overall in the country.

Just ask the fans.