Jared Soares/Journal-World PhotoThe first stop on the Road to the Final Four won’t be far away for the Kansas Jayhawks.
Try 40.9 miles down Interstate 70.
The Jayhawks learned Sunday that they would open NCAA Tournament play Friday at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo., a prospect that had appeared quite distant only a day earlier after losing to Texas in the Big 12 Tournament.
“I can’t believe it,” said Dan Diedel, a KU fan who watched Sunday’s tournament selection show with friends and family at Tanner’s Bar & Grill, 1540 Wakarusa Drive. “You can’t beat this. We all wanted Kansas City.
“Now, if we could just get tickets. …”
Oh yes, tickets.
The short drive and home-away-from-home atmosphere at Kemper is expected to drive up demand for tickets. The arena had 3,000 tickets available heading into the weekend, but employees from the Big 12 Conference were busy taking walk-up orders at the Kemper box office well into Sunday evening.
Each of the eight teams playing in Kansas City this weekend get 350 tickets, plus access to an additional 200 through a pool system. Teams not selling all of their pool allocations can turn them back in, making them available to teams with heightened demand.
Tim Allen, an associate Big 12 commissioner, expects all tickets to go fast, especially with KU and Oklahoma State playing in the same building but different regions.
Kansas fans interested in buying tickets can contact the Kemper Arena box office through Ticketmaster at (816) 931-3330, or visit www.big12sports.com.
“We think of Kansas City as a college-basketball hotbed,” Allen said. “It has to continue to show that.”
Jim Marchiony, an associate KU athletics director, said the university would work to secure as many tickets as possible for alumni and supporters. But the Jayhawks’ scoring of a trip to greater Kansas City — home to 50,000 KU alumni, more than anywhere else on the planet — ensures there will be a tight supply.
“That’s what every program wants,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of problem we like to have.”
Kirk Cerny, a vice president for the Kansas University Alumni Association, said that plans already were in the works for pep rallies and watch parties in the area.
The Golden Ox, just north of Kemper on Genessee Street, will play host to a pep rally featuring the KU Spirit Squad and pep band. All postseason pep rallies begin 90 minutes before the start of KU’s game session.
The association also is organizing KU watch parties at Johnny’s Taverns and other venues in the Kansas City area, which may be found at www.kualumni.org. Cerny expects no shortage of ways to celebrate KU’s march into postseason madness.
“I’m so excited,” he said, after returning Sunday night to Lawrence from Dallas. “I’m happy to be home again.”
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