Or at least possible causes of Friday’s games being 2000+ short of a sellout will be kicked around in a reasonable manner.

  • Both the UNC and dook fanbases are spoiled, 1st and 2nd round games really don’t excite the last two national title winners. The regional final that the same building hosted in 2009 2008 rocked the roof off and featured one the best sporting events I’ve seen live — UNC fighting off Louisville and Rick Pitino for a shot at a Final Four redemption they so desperately wanted. And got.
  • dook’s local Wal-Mart fans were busy fishing/hanging gutters on a glorious spring day. Seriously, there just are not all that many true Blue Devil fans/alums in CLT. It is, after all, a much smaller school. Sports writers seem to want to gloss over that, as if its disses the program in some way or elevates UNC unfairly. It does not. It is just reality.
  • People are getting wise to the fact that the NCAA sucks the fun out of everything. Case in point, the first taped message we get on the jumbotron — which is looking a little beat up — is from…Janet Napolitano telling us to report anything suspicious to the authorities. Yes ma’am! Here’s something damn suspicious — I’m at a basketball game in an NBA arena and there’s no beer! And you tell me the terrorists haven’t won. Yes, yes I know all about NCAA bans on alcohol but if you don’t want one-third of a crowd to wait until tip-off to get in the building — so they can get liquored up in the parking lot — or encourage the rampant smuggling of mini-bottles, just cut with the Carrie Nation bit. Other hateful NCAA practices include only showing a controversial call on the big screen once thereby guaranteeing the in-arena viewing experience is worse than staying at home and no running scores of other tourney games. The only possible excuse for the latter practice is contracts with “exclusive” NCAA providers to provide score updates via cellular networks. In other words, they could update us for free, but expect us to pay them a nickel for the info. Screw them. And screw beady-eyed Mark Emmert’s pedantic demands for sportsmanship. What does the NCAA know about fairness?
  • Judy Rose and UNCC botched the local marketing of the event. Judging from the number of lower-level tix available on Stub Hub, it looks like UNCC insiders opted to dump host allotments on the secondary market for a quick buck rather than commit to any orderly marketing of the event. I certainly do not recall seeing or hearing ads touting the NCAAs in late February. Then again, my mass media consumption is at an all-time low.
  • The economy. Hey, even the high-dollar suites were subdued, a couple dark. Certainly not packed. There were even a couple available for the weekend — albeit for about $14K a pop. Still, Uptown’s mini-Manhattan illusion seems gone forever.

In any event, the Heels once again face a hot conference tourney winner in Washington. Better toughness and ball security should get them a win on Sunday no matter who is in the stands.