NCAA ticket chances are rated slim to none

There remains a chance for fans to buy tickets to the NCAA Tournament subregional that begins Thursday at the Rose Garden, but their odds might be longer than a No.16 seed winning a first-round game.

Officially, the first and second rounds in Portland are sold out and have been since tickets were sold through an online lottery last year. There is, however, a chance that one or more of the eight teams in the two first-round sessions won’t use their 550-ticket allotment. But even that wouldn’t guarantee those tickets would be sold to the public.

Each school is required to buy 350 tickets and has another 200 available to it, said Ben Weesies, NCAA assistant director of men’s basketball. A school can return some or all of the optional 200 tickets.

However, returned tickets are first made available to the other teams in the session (Thursday tickets are for single sessions of two games each). If the other teams do not take those tickets, they would become available to the public. Does it ever happen? Weesies says it has.

“It really depends on the venue,” he said.

– Excerpt from The Oregonian, March 17, 2009