Times wires
Thursday, March 24, 2011
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The Southwest Region features three schools with double-digit seeds, including No. 10 FSU, an NCAA Tournament first.
But it might not help when it comes to selling tickets.
Tickets brokers in San Antonio are predicting empty seats tonight when top-seeded Kansas plays 12th-seeded Richmond and FSU faces 11th-seeded VCU.
Best Tickets owner Jerome Cohen said Thursday that tickets are selling below face value, and even then, "there's no activity." He chalks it up mostly to the geography of the schools.
Lynn Hickey, tournament director and athletic director of Texas-San Antonio, said officials are hoping for a lot of walk-ups for Sunday's region final. She believes the economy is a factor and said ticket sales in San Antonio are as good as the other regions, but the Alamodome has a bigger venue — configured to seat around 30,000.
"What we're telling everyone is we're making history," Hickey said. "Talk about pulling for an underdog."
STILL REMEMBER: The only history between 12th-seeded Richmond and top-seeded Kansas is 2004, when the Spiders stunned the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse.
It wasn't just any upset: Kansas hadn't lost at home to an unranked team in 52 games. For Kansas coach Bill Self, the loss wasn't a bright moment in his first season.
Self said he doesn't think about it much — except when he's reminded.
"We made a couple boneheaded plays late," Self recalled, "which I've seen on television this week to remind me of that."
GROUNDED HEELS: North Carolina was ready to head north to get to Newark, N.J., for the East Region, but the Tar Heels were grounded for a while. Three hours to be exact.
"It wasn't too bad. We usually had a meal or a meeting at 11 and we ended up, I think, meeting at about 11:45," said junior F Tyler Zeller. "The plane was very nice. We had screens that you can watch movies, TV, played games. So we had fun with it. Obviously we would have rather not be there, but it was at least a nice plane that was enjoyable to be on."
COLLEGE DEGREES: David Lighty, Jon Diebler and Dallas Lauderdale received their degrees from Ohio State in an impromptu ceremony in Chicago last weekend, at the same time their classmates went through graduation exercises in Columbus. "I think the great thing is we're going to leave college without any debt, so that's nice," Diebler said. "Getting your degree is just an awesome feeling.''