COLLEGE PARK — University of Maryland sophomore Lexie Brown has visited dozens of basketball arenas but had never experienced a din like the one created by 14,000 bellowing, stomping, red-and-black-clad Louisville Cardinals fans who "made their floor shake" during an NCAA tournament game last season.
"That was the first time I had played in front of that many people," said the guard, daughter of former NBA player Dee Brown. "Everyone wants to play in front of thousands and thousands of people. It was a sea full of red."
It was a scene that the NCAA — which has seen attendance stagnate for years in the early rounds of the women's tournament — yearns to duplicate.
The athletic association has been tinkering with rules governing when games are held and who is permitted to host them to avoid the specter of two-thirds-empty gyms during the opening rounds. This year the NCAA gave the top 16 seeds the opportunity to play host to hometown crowds. The idea is to guarantee early home games for teams that perform and draw the best.
The University of Maryland, College Park — a No. 1 seed — hosts two rounds beginning Saturday at Xfinity Center.
"There's some erosion here that people should be concerned about," said Big East Conference Commissioner Val Ackerman, the first president of the WNBA. "The sport's not growing."
Nationally, women's teams drew regular-season crowds of 1,579 on average at Division I schools last year. (This season's figures aren't yet available.) And over time, tournament crowds have declined, recording larger first-round and second-round crowds in 2000 (6,244) than last year (4,134).
Attendance "is really important on so many levels," said Maryland women's coach Brenda Frese, whose top-seeded Terps open the tournament on their home court against 16th-seeded New Mexico State on Saturday.
Xfinity Center also hosts a first-round game Saturday between undefeated Princeton, the No. 8 seed, and ninth-seeded University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. The winners will meet in College Park on Monday night.
Maryland, which drew an average of 4,885 fans during the regular season at 17,950-seat Xfinity Center, has consistently ranked in the top 20 nationally in attendance.
But like women's Division I basketball as a whole, Terps crowds have plateaued. Maryland's regular-season games had an average attendance of 5,161 in 2011 and 4,881 last year.
Other changes aimed at boosting tournament attendance are coming. Beginning in 2017, the women's Final Four and championship games will be shifted from Sunday and Tuesday to Friday and Sunday.
Ackerman, who developed a series of recommendations as an NCAA consultant in 2013, said holding the title game on a weekend will make it easier for fans to attend.
In her report, she put forth more dramatic proposals — to create two "super regionals" of eight teams instead of four regionals of four teams, and to combine the men's and women's Final Fours into a single mega-event in the same city on a trial basis. But those ideas haven't gained traction.
Ackerman said in that report that the women's game might be hurt by "perceptions that the 'below-the-rim' style of play is not as exciting as the play in men's basketball." Women fans outnumber men — 56 percent to 44 percent — at women's games, and 53 percent of fans are at least 50 years old, according to an NCAA-commissioned study in 2011.
Ackerman's report also said interest may be lagging because only a limited number of teams are perceived as having "a legitimate chance" to win the national championship.
Coached by Geno Auriemma, Connecticut went undefeated last season, claiming its ninth national title.
"But the thing about Connecticut is also that a lot of people are just fascinated with them," said women's basketball expert Mel Greenberg, a former Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter. "Even if it's a blowout, people want to watch how they play. Plus they have a coach with lots of personality."
Maryland competes for fans in an urban region with an NBA team, two NFL teams and myriad cultural attractions.
"People have a lot of options for what they're doing with their discretionary income," Frese said. "Having said that, our tickets are a lot cheaper than the men's tickets, and people seem to be able to find the income for that.
"It's making sure people are doing the right thing from the marketing end. Once people come out and watch our team, they usually want to come back."
Advocates for the women's game say it's important to remember how far it has come.
Frese, who graduated from the University of Arizona in 1993, remembers paltry crowds at her team's college games. Asked how many fans watched her at the University of Virginia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ackerman replied: "Twenty-five? 50? It wasn't a lot."
Frese said she hopes to build attendance because she wants young girls, who might be considering specializing in another sport, to associate basketball with excitement.
"It really matters in terms of what kids are seeing and what sports they ultimately choose," she said.
But many women's teams play in arenas, such as Xfinity Center, built for the larger crowds that top men's teams command. The view from the floor at women's games is largely of empty red seats.
"We bring out a lot of fans," Brown said. "But our arena is so big that even when we have a lot of people, it doesn't seem like it's packed."
She added: "Our fans are great. We may only have 5,000 or 6,000 at our games, but it sounds like we have 10,000."
More than men, Brown says, women must be emissaries for their sport. The Terps women typically hang around after games, mingling with fans outside their locker room and signing autographs. "Anytime anybody comes up to me, I will talk or pose for a picture because I was that little girl once, too," she said.
Maryland has hosted opening NCAA tournament rounds every year since 2011.
Under the new NCAA rule, Maryland's seeding this season guaranteed it would be given home-court advantage again in the first two sessions.
"The committee put this new hosting model in place in an attempt to identify ways to create a better in-arena atmosphere for our student athletes, improve attendance and enhance the broadcast look of the games," Dru Hancock, chair of the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee, said in a statement. "It also rewards institutions for their level of play for the regular season."
Last season's average attendance of 4,887 for the tournament games in College Park may sound meager, but it surpassed the national average of 4,134 for the same sessions.
Last year, the NCAA tried an experiment to attract more fans to the four regionals, which follow the first few rounds. Instead of staging the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games at neutral sites, the association permitted schools to play them at home.
The experiment enabled Louisville to host the Terps in the regional final. The Terps won, 76-73, despite Louisville's attracting 14,002 fans, the sixth-largest regional single-session crowd ever in the women's tournament. Maryland advanced to the Final Four — which has had little trouble drawing large crowds — where it was eliminated by Notre Dame.
"I drove to Louisville, and I had never been to a women's game like that," said Barbara Gold, a retired preschool teacher from University Park and self-described Maryland "superfan" who travels to most of the team's postseason games. "It was very intense."
Average attendance at last year's four regionals was 9,031 — second-best in history. The best regional attendance mark was an average of 9,244 in 2003.
But many coaches and observers complained that schools should not be given home-court advantage so deep in the tournament, with a berth in the Final Four at stake.
This year, the NCAA is returning to neutral sites for the regionals. Maryland's regional would be in Spokane, Wash.
But first the Terps must win games on their home floor on Saturday and Monday.
Frese said most Terps players generally "lock in" to games and don't focus on the size of the crowds. But players can't help but be influenced by who is present — and who is not.
"They would much rather play in front of a crowd than play in front of empty seats," Frese said.
twitter.com/sunjeffbarker