SIU Arena will go Greek for a second straight year when both basketball teams host the Greek Challenge for a combined six games this year.

The Greek Challenge is a collection of six games, five men’s and one women’s game, where fraternities and sororities compete against one another to see which group can have the most fans in the stands. Marketing graduate assistant Nicole Sack said there are more men’s games in the Greek Challenge because higher attendance is anticipated.

The fraternities and sororities are broken down into large and small categories.

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Last season, Greek games provided the highest attendance numbers all year.

The men’s games during the challenge had an average attendance of 5,576 compared to a season average of 5,238.

The women’s game had 712 people in attendance, which was the largest total of the year, compared to a season average of 448.

Tau Kappa Epsilon won the Large Fraternity subcategory with 99 attendees, while Alpha Gamma Delta won Large Sorority with 110 attendees.

In the Small categories, Kappa Alpha Order was the winning fraternity with 25 attendees and Delta Sigma Theta was the winning sorority with five attendees.

In the only Greek Challenge game of the year so far, the men’s team lost 59-52 Thursday to Northern Iowa. The game had 5,267 attendees, the second–highest of all home games this season.

Women’s coach Cindy Stein said crowd support always helps the team.

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“It’s huge,” Stein said. “You don’t want the crowd sitting on their hands.”

The next Greek Challenge game is at 1 p.m. Saturday at SIU Arena when the men take on Illinois State.

Brent Meske can be reached at [email protected] or at 536-3311 ext. 269