HOUSTON — A certain reporter may have bellied up to the hotel bar the other night, may have perched on a stool next to — coincidentally — a fellow involved in an official capacity with ticket sales for the men’s Final Four and may have heard the word “disaster” uttered no fewer than 1.4 million times in under two hours.
“Oh, my God,” a haunted Ticket Guy definitely said. “It’s such a disaster, I can’t even tell you.”
But tell he did, and tell some more. Perhaps drinking and telling are the only things left to do when there’s a championship to settle and more than 70,000 seats to fill, yet the main event is creating as much buzz as a typical undercard.
That’s just the way it is with Saturday’s national-semifinal matchups, No. 9 seed Florida Atlantic against No. 5 San Diego State followed by No. 5 Miami against No. 4 UConn at NRG Stadium, home of the NFL’s Texans.
UConn is the favorite to win it all for the fifth time in the last 24 years of the tournament, which would be two more titles than any other school has in that span. Even though they didn’t win the Big East regular-season or postseason title, the Huskies — playing like the best team in the country, which many thought they were all through December — look and feel like a traditional Final Four heavy hitter.
In comparison, the rest of the remaining field is a who’s-who of “who?”
That’s not fair at all to Miami, which tied for first place in the ACC and has the most impressive victims list — Drake, Indiana, Houston and Texas — of any team in this tournament. It’s not fair to SDSU, which won the regular-season and postseason Mountain West crowns and knocked off No. 1 overall seed Alabama in the Sweet 16. And it’s not fair to FAU, the class of Conference USA, which is a scintillating 35-3 whether anybody saw the Owls coming or not.
But it’s how these teams are perceived, in large part because of the historic dominance of No. 1 seeds in the tournament. Only one fourth-seeded team — Arizona in 1997 — has won the championship. No fifth- or ninth-seeded team ever has. The seed total of this Final Four, 23, is the second-highest ever.
Also, Miami still commonly is dismissed as a commuter school. San Diego State still makes most casual fans think about the beach. And Florida Atlantic? Is that the one Isiah Thomas coached at, or was it Florida International? Hmm …
“I would say this is certainly an unconventional group of four teams,” Miami coach Jim Larranaga said. “Only one blue blood in UConn. The blue bloods get the McDonald’s All-Americans. If the blue bloods are back here next year, you’ll have McDonald’s All-Americans in the Final Four.”
In 2022 in New Orleans, the Final Four was nothing but blue bloods — Kansas, North Carolina, Duke and Villanova — and the average semifinal ticket price was a hefty $2,885, according to Sports Illustrated. A year later, semifinal prices have plummeted by over 90%, with the average at $234.
Worth noting: That’s about $100 a seat below what the women’s tournament semis were fetching Friday in Dallas. The women’s Final Four has buzz like never before, with unbeaten superteam South Carolina sharing the spotlight with Iowa and the spectacular Caitlin Clark, LSU and the electric Angel Reese and dangerous No. 1 seed Virginia Tech.
No wonder Ticket Guy is so stricken.
FAU might not move the needle all that much, but the Owls don’t like the “Cinderella” moniker one bit.
“The term ‘Cinderella’ has always been for that team that maybe hit a spurt late in the season and got hot,” coach Dusty May said. “Maybe they [come in] averaging five made threes a game, and then over the course of five [tournament] games they make 12 a night, whatever the case. It’s more a flash in the pan vs. a five-month body of work.”
The Owls have the most wins in college basketball. If they don’t want to be Cinderella, it’s their prerogative.
UConn can even pretend it’s an underdog if it wants to. In fact, that’s just what the Huskies are doing. It’s almost easy to pull off when so few are paying close attention.
“I still feel like we’re the underdog,” guard Andre Jackson Jr. said. “I feel like we’ve been that the entire year. I feel like we came into the season and a lot of teams, a lot of people just underrated us. We still play with the same chip on our shoulder.”
Four underdogs left, then? Hey, if you dig the Big Dance in general, it shouldn’t be a bad thing. Don’t we all love underdogs in March? Then we can try to love them in the first days of April, too.
