They call the University of San Diego's Jenny Craig Pavilion the "Slim Gym," for obvious reasons, but tonight the only slim thing about the place was the crowd.
Only 3,204 fans -- at least half of them cheering for the visiting team, BYU -- attended the WCC game as the Cougars started slowly and then rolled past the Toreros 82-63 for their fifth straight win.
It was the third-smallest crowd to watch BYU play this season, surpassing only the 2,634 who watched them play Wisconsin in Chicago and the 3,073 at Loyola Marymount. The place holds about 5,000.
San Diego's students haven't returned to campus yet from the holiday break, and at times the place was so quiet you could hear the insults hurled here and there from the USD band -- which actually wasn't the USD band, really.
They borrowed horn-blowers and whatnot from San Diego State's band. I happen to know all this because press row (for NBA scouts and visiting media) was on the baseline just to the left of BYU's bench -- and directly in front of the band.
My ears may never stop ringing.

In his postgame remarks, BYU coach Dave Rose talked about the contributions from the guards -- Matt Carlino, Charles Abouo (a guard-forward kind of player) and Brock Zylstra.
With Noah Hartsock (2 of 12) and Brandon Davies (3 of 9) struggling inside, the three aforementioned players combined for 45 points to rescue the Cougars, who improved to 16-4.
"San Diego did a really good job of attacking our post guys early in the game, as far as bringing a second defender," Rose said in his opening statement. "We got some really good looks at the basket, and we didn't make them.
But our guys kept our composure and Charles did a good job early scoring for us, and Craig came in and hit a big shot.
But the second half, I think our guys were a lot more confident, knowing how they were going to be defended. We made some adjustments, and came out and really shot the ball well in the second half.
Brock hit some big shots. The shot at the end of the half that Brock made, that three when they zoned us up, I thought gave us a lot of momentum and a lot of confidence.
[San Diego] is a team that has a lot of guys that can score, No. 40 [Dennis Kramer] inside caused us some real problems.
All in all, we got balanced scoring from a lot of guys. It was a good team win."

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According to the final stats, BYU had just two points in the paint. That's got to be a season-low, or a typo. Or the paint is really slim in the Slim Gym.
The Cougars' big guys didn't take the night off totally. Davies still had 12 rebounds, part of BYU's 46-28 rebounding advantage.
It should be mentioned that Abouo had seven rebounds and seven assists to go with his 14 points -- maybe his best all-around game of the season.
The negative was that Stephen Rogers left the game in the first half after making a basket with knee trouble -- the same knee that was surgically repaired last month.
Rose said after the game that Rogers' knee was sore and felt weak, and that it will be evaluating when the Cougars return to the Provo.