The Western Kentucky women’s basketball team drew 14,984 total fans for 13 home games in the 2011-12 season.

Sixteen years ago, the program continued its quick rise to national prominence by drawing nearly that many on one Sunday afternoon.

WKU, the 11th winningest Division I program as of last season, made a splash Feb. 23, 1986, by hosting 12,951 fans at E.A. Diddle Arena for a 74-64 win over Old Dominion.

Things were different from that point forward, said Paul Sanderford, who coached the Lady Toppers from 1983-97.

“I was always big on putting butts in the seats,” Sanderford said. “To give women’s basketball any credibility in Kentucky, you had to have the fan interest and community support. That day kind of put us over the hump.”

At the time, the crowd was the second largest to ever watch a women’s basketball game in the country. It’s almost 5,000 more than the Lady Toppers have ever drawn since, and it was significantly more than Diddle Arena’s official capacity at the time of 12,370.

“It was jam-packed,” said Kami Thomas Howard, who was a senior guard at the time. “The noise level. As an athlete, you try to focus on the game, but you have a sense of the crowd and the excitement that’s in the air based on the number of people that are there.”

The stars had to align for the Lady Toppers to pull off the feat. It started with a $1 ticket promotion, which was a step up from when Sanderford took over the program.

“When I came, they didn’t pull out the bleachers,” he said. “They didn’t pull out the red towel seats at all, they didn’t take or sell tickets, and they didn’t open the concession stands. I remember telling coach (John) Oldham after the first year that I just couldn’t give away free tickets to something.

“It was like saying the product wasn’t worth anything.”

The program also began recruiting and attracting high-level talent from the state of Kentucky, like Miss Basketball winners Clemette Haskins and Lillie Mason.

Those local players brought whole communities to the arena, improving the crowds of 200 or so that Howard remembers from early in her career.

“I’ve said before, I don’t know if that’ll ever happen again, where all the pieces fit together,” said Howard, who played at Warren East High School. “It was a special time. I hope the program can bring back the excitement, but it’s tough to get all those pieces together again.”

Perhaps the biggest catalyst for the attendance spike was the most obvious – the Lady Toppers were compiling a lot of wins.

WKU won 61 games in Sanderford’s first three seasons, capped by a run to its first of two straight Final Four appearances in 1985.

The Lady Toppers hosted the Mideast Regional in the 1985 NCAA tournament, knocking off top-ranked Texas and Mississippi in thrillers at Diddle to reach the Final Four.

If the 1986 crowd against Old Dominion was the explosion, the fuse was lit during that tournament run less than a year before.

“There was more excitement for the women’s games then,” said Bowling Green resident Woody Harrell, who attended the Old Dominion game. “Coach Sanderford had done a great job of marketing and hyping the women’s game. We were at – I don’t know if you would say a golden age – but a great time for Kentucky women’s basketball.”

The Lady Toppers clinched the top seed in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament with the emphatic win that day. The fire marshal had to eventually close the doors, Sanderford said, and as many as 2,000 people – some already with tickets – were turned away.

“I came out an hour before the game, and the place was packed,” Sanderford said. “I looked at my watch, and people were sitting in the aisles.”

Sanderford had been promoting the game intensely, Howard said. The Lady Toppers were often in the community meeting fans, and Howard can’t estimate how many pieces of memorabilia she and her teammates signed and distributed to build hype, she said.

One of the people who was sold on attending the game was new WKU coach Michelle Clark-Heard, who was then a high school senior on her official visit.

“I was fortunate to play in a state tournament a couple of years before that, and I had experienced – I felt like – what the crowd was like,” Heard said. “But when I came out on my visit, I remember standing there in amazement. You couldn’t see any space anywhere. Through that whole time they recruited me, those were things I never forgot. The people were so friendly, and it was an excitement that almost didn’t feel real.”

In the last 11 years, the Lady Toppers have drawn more than 5,500 fans twice. Diddle Arena’s capacity has been reduced to 7,326, and there have been far more crowds of less than 1,000 than the swelled numbers of the program’s “golden age.”

Heard, who was hired March 22 as head coach, hopes to bring back some of that old magic, but plenty who were there haven’t forgotten the feeling.

“I turned to the coaching staff that day and said, ‘Welcome to the big time,’ ” Sanderford said.

“I was always big on putting butts in the seats. … That day kind of put us over the hump.”