Watching on ESPN tonight and seeing how many empty seats there were at the opening night of Auburn's new arena, and against a fairly marquee Florida made me glance at there numbers.

Looking at more of their home games, they don't crack 5k often.  And that's coming from a SEC school that won a championship in football a few weeks ago so you know they are all jacked up on school spirit.

SIU is decent, but they don't have D1 football which as we discussed, can only help their basketball program...and even still, like you said, they don't really have more fan support than us (although to be fair they've been down a little bit recently).

Utah State is about the best choice yet...The WAC is a stronger conference, though still not a "major" conference.  They also have had more sustained success than us of late on the court.  I think if all things were equal on the success front, Utah State (or anyone from the small conference/small city mold) wouldn't be able to match us on fan support.

Help me out here, what does not having football have to do with fans supporting basketball?

James Madison would be close to us in support.  Also, Davidson is in a small town, though a reasonable drive from Charlotte.  SIU is a good example. 

Western Kentucky is in a SMSA of about 120,000.  So they draw very well when considering their population.

The real difference for Marshall and Southern Miss. is that the in-state BCS schools are hundreds of miles away while a sizable alumni contingent is in the local region. School size is also a factor in perception. Marshall is close to enrollment size with WVU and both schools are far larger than anything else in state. The same goes for Southern Miss in comparison to Ole Miss and Miss St. In Ohio, Ohio State is in the middle of the state to minimize distance from any corner and 2 times the size of MAC schools in enrollment. They have location, enrollment, tradition, conference, alumni size on their side which all makes it very difficult for the public to view any other Ohio school athletically to be on the same level. 

Football can only help basketball not hurt it. WVU is a good example as they used football to get into the Big East and the Big East to build a regular NCAA qualifier program in basketball. When WVU was in the Atlantic 10 Ohio would play the Mountaineers 1 for 1 as the two programs were about on the same level. Out of all the college towns/college cultures out there Athens has the most in common with Morgantown. Both schools are at the top of the party school list every year. The real difference is athletic budget where WVU is 3 times as large and conference affilation that gives them an edge in recruting.They have 18 football recruits rated 78-70 by ESPN while Ohio has only 7 but that is progress for the Bobcats. Ohio State in comparison has 14 recruits rated 82-79 while both WVU and Ohio have zero. Its clear that there is a ceiling for how far the football program can go competitively while basketball could get on a level playing field in recruiting against the top programs with investment. A good football program though is required to get into a better basketball conference in most cases.