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Gonzaga Basketball

Gonzaga-North Carolina is a hot ticket; don’t count on any last-minute bargains

Those who are lucky enough to obtain tickets to Wednesday’s game may get a close look at the fury that is North Carolina coach Roy Williams. (Chris Seward / Associated Press)
By Justin Reed The Spokesman-Review

The hottest tickets in town are for Wednesday’s event at the McCarthey Athletic Center between No. 2-ranked Gonzaga and the University of North Carolina. As has been the case for every single game in the McCarthey Athletic Center, this matchup is sold out.

If you’re not a season ticket holder, student, faculty or family of either team, the chances to make the game in person are virtually zero.

But the question still remains, how can one possibly get inside of the 6,000-seat Kennel on Wednesday and why is it so difficult to gain access?

Over two-thirds of the tickets are sold to season ticket holders – approximately 4,600 – and 1,250 are for students. That leaves about 150 for faculty, family and the tickets GU is required to give the opposing team.

That means whatever remaining tickets are on a first-come-first-served basis to ZAG – Zags Athletic Giving – members.

Those are people who have donated at least $250 to support the GU athletic department and will usually be notified a day before tickets are made available. Unfortunately, it is too late to join ZAG to gain access to extra tickets before Wednesday.

Other options are secondary markets including SeatGeek, TicketMaster and StubHub. Out of all three – among others – there were none available on any of those sites.

But that is also by design as well. Not many tickets ever can be found on those websites in general as the GU athletic department monitors those markets to make sure ticket holders don’t profit, which is a policy GU holds.

“We monitor and then we reach out and educate whenever we identify somebody and issue essentially a cease and desist at that point and say ‘hey, here’s a policy or a reminder of the policy, so make sure that you don’t get caught breaking the policy,’” Chris Standiford, the deputy director of athletics said.

People who continue to break the policy have their season ticket rights revoked.

Season ticket holders have the option to allow the university to re-sell their single game tickets or they can gift them back to the university to sell to the public. These tickets usually get put back into the ZAG fund.

The last-ditch option for Wednesday would be Craiglist where a couple pairings of tickets are floating around but be aware for scams.