Every one of college basketball's 12 top-drawing conferences saw attendance fall during the just-completed men's regular season, a likely reflection of the nation's economic slide.

From the Big East and Atlantic Coast to the Missouri Valley and Mountain West, leagues saw per-game averages dip 1 percent to 5 percent, according to figures compiled by each of the conferences.

Not even the perennially Division I-leading Big Ten was immune. In a season that could take as many as eight of its teams to the NCAA tournament, it drew 514 fewer a game — a 4 percent dip to 12,384. That's the league's lowest average in four years.

The Atlantic Coast registered a 3 percent regular-season drop, coinciding with the first advance non-sellout of its conference tournament in more than four decades.

"I don't think there's any question that it's the economy," says Missouri Valley Commissioner Doug Elgin, whose league saw only a 1 percent dip during the regular season but a more startling 16 percent drop for its annual four-day tournament in St. Louis.

"The question is: What is next year going to look like?" Elgin said. "Will this slowdown continue? In order to meet that possibility, I think everybody is cutting their costs in any way they can."

Nationwide figures won't be released by the NCAA until after the season. The Division I average has risen four of the past six years.

Signs are the NCAA tournament might weather the economic storm. Five of its eight first- and second-round sites, two of its four regional sites and Detroit's Ford Field — where 70,000 will watch the Final Four — are sold out pending the possible return of tickets by participating teams. That's "right in line with where we have typically been at this point in years past," the association's Ben Weesies. says.