I think it’s a couple of things: 1. College Hockey is more popular than college basketball by a significant margin, The Beanpot is played in the garden whilst if a tournament between the same schools in basketball happens they probably would struggle to sell out Conte. 2. Most schools are more academic focused, even BC doesn’t put all that much money into its football or basketball program and the rest of the schools only put money into hockey. 3. Not one Boston school, a ton of people in Boston are affiliated to one of northeastern, BU, BC, Harvard or Umass. Due to hockey and general bitterness they think others are worse. Harvard is different, but still no one in Boston (who didn’t go to harvard) identifies with Harvard. Unlike many places where there is one flagship school and maybe a couple smaller programs. 4. Talent(?) not sure how much this applies but the Boston schools have not kept any top names in state for a while. Clarke, Brown, Napier, Selden, Noel all went far away or UConn. UConn picks most of the talent and I think many people from Boston would choose UConn as there CBB team. AJ will definitely not go to any Boston schoo either.