After seeing the Kansas University men’s basketball team play in multiple NCAA Tournaments firsthand, Ruth Nye decided to stay in Lawrence Friday night and watch the Jayhawks play at Kemper Arena from a barstool in The Yacht Club.
“I’ve never experienced this,” she yelled over the background noise of cheers and applause as the game began. “I’m getting chills.”
The fever ran through town — at sports bars, restaurants and home gatherings — as Kansas stomped Illinois-Chicago, 78-53. Some bars started filling up and turning people away by 7 p.m., almost two hours before the 8:55 p.m. tipoff. Nye and her friends had claimed their spots at the bar at 530 Wis. by 4 p.m.
Nye’s daughter, Deborah, Overland Park, came to the bar toting a tournament bracket and green highlighter. Deborah, who has tickets to the Final Four in San Antonio later this month, is a little more skeptical than her mother of the team’s ability this year. Though the Jayhawks won by a 25-point margin Friday, their errant passes were sloppy, Deborah said.
“They make me nervous,” said Deborah Nye, who penned a Sweet-16 loss to Kentucky into her rumpled copy of the tournament bracket. “I tell you what, if KU plays like this again, we’re done.”
Before the game, about 10 fans waiting to be seated at Jefferson’s Restaurant, 743 Mass., bounced on their toes in nervous anticipation of the game. Scott James, a recent graduate of the KU School of Law, tried to give his hopes poetic form.
“The wind over the Kansas prairie will extinguish the flames,” he said, punning on the Illinois-Chicago mascot.
Bars throughout Lawrence also prepared to put out fires for KU’s first tournament game this year. Buffalo Wild Wings, 1012 Mass., readied for an influx of clientele with about twice as many servers and a stock of about three times as much beer and food as a typical Friday night. And if Kansas keeps winning, the bar’s stockpile will grow exponentially with each berth into a new round of the tournament.
One Kansas City, Mo., resident casually sipped a beer at Buffalo Wild Wings, reveling in his last night of freedom as a bachelor.
“I’m getting engaged tomorrow,” said Dan Parker, who shared a table with a buddy. His girlfriend, a Missouri fan, had opted out of the trip to Lawrence to watch archrival KU play.
