If you want a seat for the March Madness games at Ball Arena, there’s still time on the clock. But the pep band has already started counting down the final seconds.
“They’re pretty much sold out,” Mountain West Conference senior associate commissioner Javan Hedlund told The Post late last week.
The Mountain West is the hosting body for the NCAA men’s tournament first- and second-round games downtown, a four-day window that starts with practices open to the public on Wednesday, with tilts to follow on Thursday and Saturday.
Hedlund said fewer than 30 tickets remained for each of the two first-round sessions on Thursday and for the single session in the second round on Saturday. Each session features two games.
Tickets are available via secondary market sites. StubHub.com as of Friday evening offered “get-in” prices as low as $102 including fees for Session 1, with a “get-in” low of $99 including fees for Session 2.
All-session tickets on the site had a low “get-in” price of $400 including fees as of Friday.
The lowest “get-in” price for Saturday’s second-round session was $197 with fees.
Expect 4-13 and 5-12 matchups at Ball Arena
The NCAA selection committee “protects” better seeds — that is, to say, its 1, 2 and 3 seeds — with first- and second-round sites that are the closest to their respective campuses.
CBS Sports bracketologist Jerry Palm as of Friday evening projected Auburn, his top seed in the South, to land in Lexington, Ky., while assigning projected 1 seeds Florida (West) and Duke (East) to start their journeys in Raleigh, N.C.
However, teams from the “4” line on down tend to land more random assignments after the top seeds are accounted for. Which is where Denver comes in, as the Front Range is not considered geographically advantageous to any of the top dozen or so teams in the field.
Palm’s projected bracket as of early Friday night had Ball Arena hosting third-seeded Texas A&M against No. 14 Utah Valley and No. 6 Memphis vs. No. 11 West Virginia in one pod. The other pod would see No. 4 Purdue take on No. 13 High Point and No. 5 Ole Miss face No. 12 Drake.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi as of early Friday evening had No. 3 Kentucky vs. No. 14 Utah Valley and No. 6 Illinois vs. No. 11 VCU in one pod, with No. 4 Texas A&M vs. No. 13 Yale and No. 5 Clemson vs. 12th-seeded McNeese in the other.
Denver could need a new host conference or school
Denver and the Mountain West were supposed to host men’s tourney games at Ball Arena three times during this bid cycle, in ’21, ’23 and ’25. But the COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled the ’20 NCAA tourney outright, forced the NCAA to move the 2021 tourney to sites in or near Indianapolis.
The metro is not slated to host men’s basketball or women’s basketball tourney games in 2027 or 2028. The NCAA announced those sites on a two-year, rather than four-year, basis last October. Men’s Final Four sites are contracted through 2030.
“They’ve always been great hosts. We love working with Ball Arena,” Hedlund said. “The interesting thing will be what we do (in the future).”
That’s because the Mountain West is moving its conference headquarters from Colorado Springs to greater Las Vegas soon as part of its restructuring and split from five longtime members — including CSU.
The Rams, Boise State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Utah State announced last year that they would leave the conference to join the revamped Pac-12 in the summer of 2026.
It’s expected that Ball Arena could need a new partner conference or school for future NCAA men’s or women’s tourney bids going forward.
The metro will host major NCAA postseason events before 2029, but not in basketball.
The 2027 women’s gymnastics regionals will be held at DU’s Magness Arena, which the Pios will host; Loveland’s Blue Arena will host the 2027 men’s hockey regionals, which will also be hosted by DU. The Pios are the “host” school for the 2028 men’s Frozen Four but will do so at the United Center in Chicago.