St. Louis ? J.R. Giddens and Jeremy Case returned from practice Saturday afternoon and tried to get into their room at the Marriott Pavilion Hotel in downtown St. Louis.
One problem: Their card keys didn’t work.
The same happened to freshman guard Nick Bahe, who ambled back down to the front desk to get his key recoded.
The desk clerk’s small talk caught the walk-on off guard.
“Are you guys staying the night?” the clerk asked.
Bahe, sporting KU sweats with a towel slung over his shoulder, tried not to laugh. Standing beneath a giant banner welcoming teams and fans for the NCAA regionals at the Edward Jones Dome, Bahe kindly reassured the clerk, noting that he’d just returned from practice and simply looked forward to a little rest up on the 18th floor.
“I didn’t want to say, ‘Yeah, we plan to stick around. I think we need to go ahead and stay in St. Louis because we have a game tomorrow.’ Maybe they just don’t like me and (roommate) Keith (Langford) and Jeremy and J.R.”
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With thousands of tickets still available from the dome’s box office, and hundreds more on the market with Friday’s exit of the universities of Nevada and Alabama-Birmingham, you might think that freelance ticket brokers are drowning in a glut of tickets for today’s regional final.
Think again.
Robert Richardson, who came down from Detroit to hawk tickets, reports having moved 75 tickets through Saturday evening. He fetched as much as $150 for a few of his prime $60 face-value seats in the lower level, but Saturday’s rising supply and soft demand dropped the price close to $100 as darkness approached.
| What is it like, as a freshman, to be 40 minutes away from a trip to the Final Four?— Asked of KU center David Padgett, now 3-0 lifetime in NCAA Tournament play. “Sometimes I just kind of sit back and think about the fact that I’m actually here. I mean, I’m just used to watching this on TV, over the last 18 years of my life, and now that I’m actually here and getting an opportunity to do it, I just hope — I hope to death — that we can get to the next weekend.” |
He expects prices to climb back up as today’s 1:40 p.m. tip approaches, as KU fans holding upper-level seats look to improve their spots and new fans coming into town simply need to get into the building.
Upper-level seats remain for sale, for $50 apiece, from the dome box office.
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Justin Bauman isn’t taking any chances.
KU’s head manager, a senior in sports management and fitness, will be wearing the same tan suit behind the bench tonight that he’s been sporting throughout KU’s 3-0 run thus far in the NCAA Tournament.
He had been wearing black, but that tack ended when KU lost to Texas in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament.
“It’s not really a superstition,” Bauman said. “It’s more just for fun.”
During last year’s tournament, Bauman went six games in a row wearing a green suit without cleaning it once.
“It was a hand-me-down suit from coach (Roy) Williams,” he said. “We wore the same size.”
But not anymore. Williams moved on to North Carolina, and Bauman has moved up a size or two in the past year.
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Speaking of suits, Bauman reports that the Jayhawks will be sporting blue road uniforms tonight, not the crimson ones reinstated this year after Larry Brown’s superstitious banishment after a Final Four loss in 1986.
But should the Jayhawks advance with a win tonight, the reds would be on the trip to San Antonio for this year’s Final Four, in case Bill Self wanted to suit up his team in the suits that have gone 3-0 so far this season.
“It’s always coach’s decision,” Bauman said.
