Feb. 26, 2007

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Northwestern is the recipient of the Big Ten's 2007 SuperFan Cup, the conference office announced today. The annual award is presented to a Big Ten school in recognition of its marketing and promotion efforts that helped boost attendance at women's basketball games.

NU increased attendance at their eight conference home games by over 43 percent this season compared to last year's figures. The SuperFan Cup is designed to reward the Big Ten school that has the most significant increase in attendance over the eight-game conference homestand from the previous year. Northwestern welcomed 7,460 fans (933 average) to Welsh-Ryan Arena in those eight contests this season, compared to 5,212 patrons a year ago. The Wildcats also recorded attendance figures in four of their eight games this year that were well above their average of 652 fans per game last season.

Highlighting those four notable games was the Iowa matchup on Jan. 7 when Northwestern welcomed 3,121 fans to the game. Dubbed the "Purple Hair Dare," NU head coach Beth Combs agreed to dye her hair purple since the Wildcats had sold 3,000 tickets prior to the game, and the first 500 fans were given purple wigs to take part in the celebration as well.

In addition, Northwestern promoted the conference's SuperFan campaign with public address announcements at each game, encouraging fans to share their gameday experiences with the Big Ten office through its special e-mail address superfan@bigten.org. Wildcat fan Joyce Stutz wrote, "My daughter Jenna is a loyal Northwestern fan and her cousin happens to be No. 14 Julie Bielawski. We have been at every home game and some away games. My daughter is 13 years old and she wrote a SuperFan poem for her Language Arts class."

The 2007 Big Ten Women's Basketball Tournament presented by Xbox 360 will take place March 1-5 - an event that saw record-breaking attendance figures last year. The 2006 tournament attendance of 38,638 and session average of 7,728 were both event records in the 12-year history of the tournament. The previous marks of 37,635 and 7,527 were set in 2004. The five most recent editions of the women's tournament have posted the highest attendance in the event's history, surpassing the 30,000-patron mark each year.

For more information, please visit the click Big Ten's website .