Thirty minutes before a recent game, UTSA students Tim Hillyer and Sam Burnside looked at the empty Convocation Center from their courtside seats and wondered where their friends were.

UTSA’s basketball team was picked to finish at the bottom of Conference USA before the season. But the overachieving Roadrunners have been a surprise, starting 8-9 and winning every home game.

Still, local fans and students have been late to the party to support a team that already has surpassed its victory total for last season heading into its home game Saturday against Florida International.

“It’s a reoccurring problem,” said Hillyer, a junior majoring in kinesiology and athletic medicine. “We’re not culturally a basketball school. I know we’ve made the tournament before and had some success, but the students who are at this school now don’t know this team is getting good at basketball.”

A late rush of students helped pack the Convocation Center on Thursday night, resulting in a season-best crowd of 1,417 that coach Steve Henson said was a big factor in the comeback victory over Florida Atlantic. But it was still barely half of the building’s 2,650-seat capacity.

“I’d like to see it where it was a basketball school and this place would fill up for big games up into the upper level,” said Burnside, a senior majoring in mathematics. “But in order to do that, we’ve got to build up even a bigger name for ourselves. Football is doing that by making the bowl game this season, and it’s been huge. And if we go out and make a run in Conference USA basketball championship, that would get our name out as well.”

Thursday’s larger crowd was the result of Henson imploring his team to ask other classmates to come to the arena and take advantage of the free tickets provided by their student fees.

The pitch appeared to work — at least for some of the students. Now, Henson’s task is to make similar inroads with the rest of the student body and the city as a whole.

Henson is attempting to rebuild after last season’s 5-27 record, the worst in the 36-season history of the program. It continued a stretch of four consecutive losing seasons and was UTSA’s fifth straight season without an NCAA Tournament appearance.

UTSA is averaging 948 fans for its first seven home games this season to rank 289th among the 350 Division I teams. It’s a drop of almost 13 percent from last season’s home average of 1,072.

School officials say that is because of the recent success of the football team and by having three games played during the student’s recent semester break.

“We haven’t had good basketball crowds for several years,” UTSA athletic director Lynn Hickey said. “Coach Henson has done a good job of meeting with the students and our alums. But until football is over, it’s a hard push to make. We’ve got to get to the point where we can do both.”

The Roadrunners are not alone in struggling to attract fans. San Antonio traditionally is a soft college basketball market — even for NCAA Tournament games.

While the men’s and women’s basketball Final Fours have been wildly popular at the Alamodome, other NCAA Tournament games have struggled to find local support. Disappointing crowds marked the NCAA’s last two appearances in San Antonio, second- and third-round games at the AT&T Center in 2014 and a regional at the Alamodome in 2011.

Other South Texas schools have struggled at the gate this season as well. Incarnate Word (522 average, 335th), Texas-Rio Grande Valley (1,087, 273rd), Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (1,312, 235th) and Texas State (1,553, 212th) all are well down the NCAA’s list of Division I programs.

Hickey said she doesn’t believe her task in building a basketball program is hurt by the Spurs, who have played games on four of the seven days of UTSA home games so far. Another UTSA game directly competed against the Valero Alamo Bowl on Dec. 29.

“There’s an advantage in having a championship team in the fact that a lot of people in the city like to watch basketball,” she said. “And for us, you can get a ticket that’s less than $10 and you can really reach out and get to know the players and coaches. (The Spurs) can only put 18,000 in their building. We’ve got to get our product good enough where they want to come in our building. It’s marketing. It’s getting students involved and creating a crazy, fun atmosphere. And then we’ve got to continue to work and get Steve to build his team.”

The scope of Henson’s project doesn’t faze him.

“We’re working on it, and we’ll get there,” he said. “It’s a process, just like building our team. We’ve got a young, fun group that will keep getting better. And as more people see and enjoy it, they will want to come back.”

tgriffin@express-news.net

Twitter: @TimGriffinBig12