And evidently, many other students would agree. During the Jan. 24 DePaul game, the Bradley Center crowd may have been as quiet as it's has been for any weekend conference game in the last two years, and the crowd for last week's TCU game was no improvement, despite last Saturday's win at Louisville and the manic pleas of many diehards in the crowd to make noise.

Worse, post-game reaction on Tuesday was more fatalistic than optimistic. A few students hinted that they saw little use in cheering on an unranked team (because, as we all know, top-25 rankings are the be all and end all measure of a team's success). Others wrote us off as NIT material.

Ah, but last year, these very same students couldn't get enough Marquette basketball. We were nearly unbeatable at home. Dwayne Wade was providing us flashy dunks. The season felt like an endless joyride, and few people could contain their love for the program.

Sadly, though, jumping off the bandwagon has seemingly proven as easy as climbing aboard. A year ago, many students, including me, compared our Fanatic section to a smaller version of Florida's Rowdy Reptiles or Duke's Cameron Crazies. But to do so this year would be a joke. Those teams' fans don't wait for a made three-pointer or a dunk to start making noise.

And make no mistake: Fan support does matter. The Bob Mates of the world who would have you think otherwise are dead wrong. More accurate is Sports Illustrated, which one wrote, in reference to Duke's student section, "(They're) proof of two long-held assumptions: 1) Fans can make a difference. 2) Even smart people can act like idiots."

To be sure, Tom Crean doesn't butter up his "sixth man" each game just to make us feel good about ourselves. Last year, at the height of the team's success, students were crying for more 200-level Fanatic tickets. But after the lack of loyalty shown by so many students this year, Marquette administration would be more justified in taking the lower bowl seats that we do have and giving them to alumni, who show genuine long-term interest in the program.

I don't doubt that the Fanatics will return to last year's level of enthusiasm in coming years when the team is once again unbeatable at home. But to look at this year's team, a squad in contention for an NCAA tournament bid, as a comparative failure (or even worse, to give up on the season) is absolutely absurd and unfair to the team.

I understand that we all came to school for our education, not for sports. At the same time, supporting our teams is one of the best ways we can express our school's identity, pride, and unity. Unfortunately, I have lately found myself disappointed, as well as amazed, that here at Marquette of all places – where we bear week after week of sub-freezing temperatures, gray skies, and snow-covered sidewalks – our fans should be so fair-weather.

Bergl is a sophomore civil engineering major.