Maryland men’s basketball has played terrifically and above most expectations through their first 10 games. Their nine wins have brought them to be ranked 19th in the country which is particularly impressive when you consider the Terps haven’t been in the top 25 since the 2009-10 season.

Yet, one thing isn’t quite right about this team and it has nothing to do with their performance. It’s the fans. I’m not suggesting that Maryland doesn’t have passionate and loyal fans, but the attendance figures for this year have been abysmal and it’s hard to explain why.

The average home attendance through the Terps’ first eight home games has been 9,890. It hasn’t been that low since…well, a long time. NCAA records on attendance show Maryland never having an average attendance that low since they started keeping track in 1970.

Now, there are caveats to this before people go riot and break stuff in the name of Testudo. First and foremost, there have been a lot of fodder games for Maryland against obscure opponents. Teams like Wagner, Central Connecticut State and North Carolina Central probably aren’t going to fill the XFINITY Center.

Additionally, the doom of finals week is upon Maryland students. With finals starting next Monday, it’s hard to blame students for prioritizing that organic chemistry exam over watching a twenty point victory against Winthrop.

But still, I’m going to argue that those reasons aren’t enough to let an attendance average below 10,000 slide. Among Big Ten schools, Maryland is tenth out of the 14 teams and falls below the overall average home attendance for the conference. For the inaugural Big Ten season, that is a horrible look, especially considering how good Maryland has been playing.

Every legitimate program starts the season with a cupcake schedule, and that hasn’t stopped other Big Ten teams from drawing full crowds. All students — to my knowledge — also have final exams either already upon them or about to come up, so that is not unique to UMD.

Take Wisconsin for example. The Badgers are 5-3 on the year and have had back-to-back embarassing losses to Creighton and Incarnate Word (seriously, Incarnate Word). The best team they’ve played is Florida State, a team that should probably stick to football. Beyond the Seminoles, they’ve brought in opponents such as Northern Kentucky, Central Arkansas and the University of Tennessee at Martin.

Nebraska has been a complete disappointment with some of their losses, yet has still drawn an average crowd of 15,705. Hell, their pool for the student section is even smaller with a shade under 25,000 total students compared to College Park’s 38,000.

It’s shameful. And not surprising. Maryland has seen declining attendance numbers under coach Mark Turgeon’s reign that led to the first time since 1993 that the Terps were not in the top 25 for attendance. The cause isn’t about the Big Ten either, as Maryland football saw attendance jump almost 14 percent from last year and drew an average capacity that filled 91 percent of Byrd Stadium.

So, the question still needs an answer: what is it about basketball? I can’t make sense of the senseless. Maybe it’s lasting skepticism and cynicism from last year’s mediocre performance that has lingered over. Maybe Maryland students are a little more studious than those in Lincoln, Nebraska. Maybe there needs to be more aggressive promotion of the games to students and alumni. These are all just theories, trying to fix the cognitive dissonance I feel when I have watched Maryland play like a top team in the nation but draw an attendance that is yells mediocrity.

Hopefully, when Big Ten conference games start on January 3rd with Minnesota, fans will wake up, realize these Terps are for real and pack the stands. But in the meantime, with an 11 a.m. Saturday draw against USC Upstate followed by Oakland, it’s hard to see an immediate fix to the attendance problems of Maryland basketball.