College basketball has been fighting a perception problem for years now -- namely that it has become a three-week sport and no one cares much about the regular season.

The men's basketball attendance numbers released this week would bear that problem out -- even if the NCAA didn't exactly present it that way. The press release sung the praises of a 480-person increase in college hoops attendance, which is true, but math, despite its black/white, right/wrong objectivity, can be twisted for one's own gain.

In this case, the finer print reveals that the NCAA used a bit of subjective math. That 480-person bump includes all divisions of college hoops and more significantly, the NCAA tournament.

The money-making group of Division I actually saw its regular-season attendance drop by 536 people.

Now for the conundrum: Syracuse, both city denizens and fans, apparently enjoyed thumbing their collective noses at NCAA sanctions, a postseason ban this year and bad-boy branding. A total of 429,378 and an average of 23,854 of them came through the turnstiles at the Carrier Dome to earn home attendance first-place honors.

So apparently the regular season does mean something in Syracuse, but then the question becomes how to market that.

Now before Orange fans get too full of themselves and start gloating at the Big Blue Nation of runner-up Kentucky, realize that Carrier Dome seats 35,000-plus for hoops. Rupp Arena taps out at 23,500 (or 22 more than UK somehow squished on average in the place). And if you built a 600,000-seat arena in Lexington, they would come.

So congrats Syracuse, but simmer down.

Here are some other amusing tidbits:

• UK beat out Louisville by an average of 2,186 people. Expect heavy doses of season-ticket propaganda, Cards fans.

• No surprise, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, then, ranked as the strongest state showing, with the Wildcats and Cardinals coming in at Nos. 2-3 in the average attendance standings. The second-best state effort? If you had that basketball-loving hotbed of Nebraska, then pat yourself on the back. Creighton and the Cornhuskers (ranked sixth and 10th respectively) were the only schools from the same state in the top 10.

• More Kentucky ... the Wildcats were officially the rock stars of hoops. Kentucky attracted 845,594 people in home, road and neutral games. Runner-up Wisconsin brought in a distant 711,115.

• Coach Bruce Pearl sells. Auburn saw the second-best bump in attendance out of all D-I schools, with an average increase of 2,002 per game.

• And finally, the Big Ten won conference bragging rights, with 3,195,137 people attending league games.

The news release explains that 11 of the 12-member schools in the Big Ten averaged 10,000 or more per game and cities. With the additions of Maryland and Rutgers to the conference, the implication is that those two schools helped the Big Ten win.

We'll give you Maryland.

But Rutgers? The Scarlet Knights averaged 5,770.

Uh, no.

Then again, the Big Ten hasn't won a national championship since 2000, so hey, maybe that's where the regular season does matter who comes in?