ACC men’s basketball teams struggling at the box office

Wednesday night’s Duke-North Carolina game played out like a nationally televised infomercial for the drawing power of ACC men’s basketball. A delirious sell-out crowd was on hand at Dean Smith Center to see the hated Blue Devils stun the Tar Heels on Austin Rivers’s buzzer-beating three-pointer.

But such scenes in the stands have become increasingly rare in the ACC. With the college basketball regular season in its final month, nine of the conference’s 12 men’s basketball teams are on pace for a lower attendance from last year. Maryland and Virginia Tech both are averaging more than 1,500 fewer fans per game than this time last season, the two biggest drops in the league.

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As a whole, the ACC is averaging 9,406 fans through Wednesday. It would be the lowest average for the league since the 1984-1985 season and the first time it has been lower than 10,000 since the 1988-1989 season. If those figures don’t drastically improve, it would be the fourth consecutive year the ACC’s attendance numbers declined.

Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA who teaches a course on sports business, said college basketball attendance throughout the country is down this season.

The Big East, for instance, is averaging 10,421 fans this season, down nearly 8 percent from 2010-11. But that conference saw attendance rise in every season from 2008-09 to 2010-11.

The ACC and Pacific-12 are the only leagues that have seen their attendance figures drop in every year since 2008.

“The [ACC] has to be concerned. As those types of numbers become more of a trend rather than a one- or two-year item, the league really does have to worry about that,” Ohanian said. “I would not be surprised if those programs have seen their winning percentage go down significantly.”

Wake Forest Athletic Director Ron Wellman, who has seen attendance at Lawrence Joel Coliseum drop by close to 50 percent since 2006, believes there are a number of factors, from the advent of high-definition televisions to an economy that’s still recovering from a recession to even the dates and times of scheduled games.

But he can’t ignore that perhaps it’s the play on the court that has also led to the downturn. After all, the Demon Deacons were ranked No. 1 in the country in January 2009, but have gone 19-37 the past two seasons.

“I think everyone recognizes that we’re not as competitive as we were a few years ago,” said Wellman, the ACC’s representative on the NCAA tournament selection committee. “We’re probably, in terms of depth in the conference, not as deep as we typically are. But heavens, if you look at the national championships the conference has won, nobody comes close to that.”

The ACC has won more NCAA titles than any other conference since 1981 (10), but eight of those belong to Duke and North Carolina. Not surprisingly, those two and Virginia — which this season got off to its best start since 1982-83 — are the only teams in the league that haven’t had their announced attendance fall so far (when comparing average attendance this season to average attendance on the same date last season).