The Pit court sits 37 feet deep in New Mexico dirt.
Filling up that iconic arena with fans once again might be more of an uphill climb than the University of New Mexico had anticipated.
Last month, as new season tickets went on sale for the UNM Lobo men’s basketball team and roughly 6,500 had already been secured through renewals or other presales, optimism was high that the 2021-22 season would likely get back to the pre-pandemic 8,193 season ticket figure of the 2019-20 season.
Now, just days before the Wednesday season opener against Florida Atlantic, and as the reality of some lingering COVID hesitancy coupled with the increased apathy that has set in amid the program’s longest postseason drought since the Pit opened in 1966, school officials are now just hoping they can reach a base number of about 7,000 season tickets sold for the coming season — the first under newly hired head coach Richard Pitino.