Season-ticket holders, prospective ticket buyers and assorted ticket brokers are waiting to see just how valuable the fieldhouse’s 16,300 seats will be this season, the first time in 15 years that the men’s basketball team has opened a season outside the Associated Press Top 25.

“Right now prices are very, very reasonable because we don’t know what we have yet,” said Hal Wagner, owner of Ace Sports & Tickets, which buys and sells KU tickets at outlets in Lawrence and Overland Park. “With the schedule we have – the first 10 home games – they’ll probably win all 10. The record will show that they’ll be ranked by the first of January. :

“But right now, we don’t know what we have.”

The chance to discover what the Jayhawks’ future holds starts tonight, with a 7 p.m. exhibition game against Fort Hays State. The game is included as part of KU’s season ticket package, at a face-value cost of $760.

While tickets for exhibition games typically struggle to command even face value on the secondary, single-ticket market, such prices for the team’s top draws – against Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kentucky – likely won’t be settled until the team has had a chance to prove itself on the court, Wagner said.

Ace Sports & Tickets hasn’t yet set its prices for the Jan. 7 game against Kentucky – a clash of two of the game’s most storied college programs – but folks on eBay already are peddling pairs of tickets for $450.

“That’s the granddaddy of them all: Kentucky,” Wagner said. “It doesn’t matter what kind of team they’ll have, everybody wants to go to Kentucky. When they play Kentucky, if they’re sitting there with a 12-2 record or a 13-1 record, that game will go through the roof.”

Jim Marchiony, an associate athletics director at KU, said demand for season tickets heading into this season was no different than for any other season – hot.

All 16,300 seats in the fieldhouse are sold, he said, and the points system that allows donors to upgrade to better seats is poised to boost donations to the Williams Fund past last year’s $8 million.

Marchiony isn’t fazed by the pollsters’ ending of KU basketball’s rankings streak. All of the men’s basketball tickets were sold months ago, and the market showed no signs of a slowdown.

“I think fans realize there is nothing in the world more meaningless than a preseason poll,” Marchiony said. “It doesn’t have that much effect, not with Kansas fans, anyway. It’s one of the blessings of being associated with Kansas: The fans love this sport.”

KU’s ticket system has made a few changes for this year, Marchiony said:

¢ All tickets have bar codes, so KU can void tickets that are lost and reissue them so season-ticket holders don’t get left out.

¢ KU students who buy student tickets won’t get tickets at all – instead, they will have their KUID cards scanned at the gate. That means no more students selling tickets.

Wagner said the ticketing changes would be good for ticket dealers. Ace Sports & Tickets doesn’t deal in student tickets, and refuses to buy tickets from people who aren’t the original ticket holders.

As for pricing, Wagner figures that the levels will play themselves out. People will pay a premium if, as he expects, the team hits a prolonged winning streak. Prices will dip if the Jayhawks struggle early.

Just don’t ask.

“They’re going to be competitive. They’re going to make the playoffs. I’m very optimistic about this year’s team. They’re going to surprise a lot of people,” said Wagner, whose Lawrence store moved from the downtown area to 1216 E. 23rd St. this year. “All you can ask for is that they win the majority of their games, that they win all of their games at Allen Fieldhouse, and that they go to the playoffs and do better than lose to Bucknell (in the first round of last season’s NCAA Tournament).

“This team has a lot to prove.”