Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 1, 1994 TAG: 9404010078
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Long
The Charlotte Coliseum seats 22,876 for the event. Of those seats, 2,014 were sold to the general public through a lottery of 267,498 request forms for more than 533,000 individual tickets.
That demand nearly doubled the previous record of 143,829 applications for the 1991 Final Four at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis. Besides the 2,014 public seats, the remaining tickets are reserved for the NCAA, the National Association of Basketball Coaches and the four schools.
The face value of a Final Four ticket - one seat for two sessions, Saturday and Monday night - is $65. It has been reported that the street value of the best seats has pushed past $3,000.
North Carolina law permits a ticket to be sold for no more than $3 above the face value. So, many of the seats being sold have out-of-state contacts.
One classified ad among the 4 1/2 columns of Final Four listings in Thursday's Charlotte Observer: "Four of the best seats in Charlotte . . . Section 109, midcourt, four rows from the action. $4,000 for all four or $1,250 each."
The area code was 702. That's Nevada.
\ LUTE CUTE: Indications are that if President Clinton is going to appear at the Final Four to cheer for his home-state Razorbacks, it won't be until Monday night's championship game.
If Clinton does show for Saturday's Arkansas-Arizona semifinal, however, Wildcats coach Lute Olson said the president would be welcome in the Arizona locker room "as long as he doesn't ask me whether I voted for him."
\ DUKE OUT: Perhaps you saw Florida coach Lon Kruger's son, 10-year-old Kevin, on the Gators' bench during Sunday's East Regional final victory over Boston College.
What you didn't see or hear is that Kevin's favorite shirt is a Duke sweat shirt. He made a trip in February to Tallahassee, Fla., to watch Duke win at Florida State.
His parents won't let Kevin take the Duke shirt on road trips, so don't expect to see him bedeviling his father on the bench during Saturday's semifinal game.
\ FINAL FAUX: Downtown Charlotte - actually, they call downtown Uptown here - doesn't have enough dining and drinking establishments to handle the Final Four crush.
What to do? At 11 a.m. Thursday along four blocks of Tryon Street, what had been empty storefronts were reopened as what one Charlotte scribe called "fake restaurants and bars."
The four blocks between Stonewall and Fourth streets have been renamed Street of Champions through Tuesday. Vehicular traffic is prohibited. Fans who don't have tickets to the games at the Charlotte Coliseum can watch the CBS telecasts projected onto an eight-story wall at First Union Plaza.
\ PIVOT PAIR: Although Duke and Florida have not played since the December 1987 Fiesta Bowl Classic, Saturday's semifinal opener won't be the first meeting of big men Cherokee Parks and Andrew DeClercq.
Parks and DeClercq took their recruiting visits to Duke on the same weekend three winters ago. Mickie Krzyzewski, wife of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, sat between them at a game.
Each wanted to sign with Duke, and Mike Krzyzewski picked the 6-foot-11 Californian. DeClercq, a 6-10 center from Clearwater, Fla., then chose his home-state school over Virginia.
\ SAME DANCE: Nolan Richardson, coach of second-ranked Arkansas, says he doesn't see any reason to alter the Razorbacks' approach from their 1990 Final Four semifinal loss to Duke.
"We're the same guys who coached the same kids back then," Richardson said. "I think the game dictates what you're going to do. I don't see anything I should change. I don't need to get too smart right now.
" . . . If it ain't broke, I don't need to fix it. I don't need to get too smart right now. We brought that lady to the dance, and if we can still dance, that's what we're going to do."
\ CONFERENCE CALL: The Final Four teams have combined for an impressive 58-3 nonconference record. Duke and Arkansas each are 14-0 outside the ACC and Southeastern Conference, respectively.
Arizona was 15-1 outside the Pacific-10, losing only to Kentucky in the Maui Classic. Florida was 15-2 outside the SEC, falling to Louisville in the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu and to Florida State at Orlando Arena.
That's zero non-league losses on home or road floors.
\ PULLING RANK: The Saturday semifinal between sixth-ranked Duke and 14th-ranked Florida isn't quite as attractive as another meeting of the schools scheduled that day. No. 2 Florida will meet No. 8 Duke in a women's tennis match at 2 p.m. Saturday in Durham.
\ ACC-TION: Besides winning the past three NCAA titles, the ACC owns one-fourth of the 60 Final Four berths since 1980. . . . The ACC's current streak of teams in seven Final Fours is unprecedented since the UCLA dynasty. . . . The ACC has been represented in 12 of the past 14 Final Fours, by five schools - Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia and Georgia Tech. . . . Duke's seventh Final Four trip in nine years has pushed the Blue Devils' overall total to 11, tying North Carolina for second place behind UCLA's 13. Kansas and Kentucky have 10 each.
by CNB