Game Tickets a Hot Commodity

RALEIGH — Local teams have their tickets to the big games, but many fans have been left out in the cold. While fans are virtually overflowing with excitement, the tickets they would love to have are, for the most part, impossible to come by.

North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest are headed for the NCAA Tournament, while a strong showing from NC State in the ACC Tournament brought them an invitation to the National Invitational Tournament. That has fans scrambling to make travel plans and find tickets.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of UNC fans vying for only 17 tickets Monday night. Some spent the night camped out in front of the Dean Dome waiting for Tuesday morning sales. Senior Kate Sullivan says she gave up part of her Spring Break to wait in line.

UNC Ticket Operations Director Daren Lucas said the school only got 350 tickets and that highly sought batch of 17 is all that's left.

Duke fans aren't under quite as much pressure. With the Blue Devils playing in the larger Charlotte Coliseum, more seats are available. It's expected that up to 2,000 students and alumni will get tickets to that game. Several thousand more tickets have sold briskly since last Friday.

At State, Wolfpack fans have begun buying up the 12,000 tickets for Wednesday's NIT opener in Reynolds Coliseum.

At UNC, ticket managers are concerned that scalpers will offer students a profit for their tickets, then charge much higher prices selling them. UNC graduate student Jennifer Colt says nobody's getting her ticket at any price.

For information on tickets to NC State's NIT game Wednesday night at 9:30, call the Reynolds Coliseum box office at 919-515-9442, 9443 or 9444, or call Ticketmaster. For information on tickets to the Duke game at the Charlotte Coliseum Friday at 10 p.m., call 704-357-4801. Duke students and alumni can also call the ticket office on campus. To follow Wake Forest to Tucson, Arizona for Friday's 7:55 p.m. game, call 910-759-5613.

Again, tickets for UNC's Thursday night game at Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem are sold out.

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