Let’s hope the food was good

Question: What do fans Scott and Eric Richison have to do with the Duke, Connecticut and Vanderbilt basketball teams?

Answer: They all made shockingly early exits.

After paying $120 per ticket to watch both games Saturday, the Richison brothers left the Honda Center at the intermission to grab a bite to eat.

Turns out, they had to eat their tickets.

The NCAA does not allow people to leave the arena then re-enter on the same ticket. That prevents spectators from using a single ticket to get more than one person into the game.

Evidently, the Richisons did not hear those announcements during the first game, and, because they left through an unmanned emergency exit, they weren’t warned as they walked out.

So they spent the first half of the UCLA-Texas A&M; game trying to talk their way back into the arena. They grew increasingly agitated when it became clear they wouldn’t be getting back in.

“I can’t believe this,” said Scott, who lives in San Diego and said his brother flew down from the Bay Area to catch the games. “We bolted out to beat the crowd.”

And they did beat it. By at least two hours.

Rich Raulston got his hands on some prime tickets to the games.

Too bad he had no use for them.

Raulston -- better known as Sgt. Raulston of the Santa Ana police -- was patrolling the strip-mall parking lot across Katella Avenue from the Honda Center, breaking up scalping transactions if the seller couldn’t produce a business license.

“A lot of these people out here are selling stolen tickets,” he said. “I don’t like to see people losing their money. It’s buyer beware, basically.”

Not only did UCLA fan Alan Robbins get into the game. So did his dog.

That’s because Robbins is highly allergic to some common cleaning compounds, and his teacup terrier, Star, is trained to detect their scent. When the tiny dog smells the chemicals, he warns Robbins by running circles in his lap.

Robbins, who suffered a heart attack last year, had one allergic reaction this basketball season, in a Pauley Pavilion restroom, but his dog wasn’t with him.

Although the dog didn’t seem bothered by the crowd noise, Robbins said Star was shaky last football season in the Bruins’ 44-6 loss at Utah.

“Utah fired off a cannon every time they scored,” Robbins said. “And they scored a lot.”

Surely, Star wasn’t the only one rattled on that day.

When Stanford won, Deborah Ledford could breath again.

She’s the mother of 7-foot twins Brook and Robin Lopez, and she was doing everything she could during the waning moments of Stanford’s 82-81 overtime victory over Marquette.

Wearing all black -- an outfit that made her stand out in a raucous sea of red-clad fans -- Ledford quietly jotted notes on the back-and-forth game, something she does to calm her nerves.

But the end was almost too tough for her to bear. With 1.3 seconds left in overtime, Brook made a short jump hook from the baseline to put Stanford up for good. While everyone around her erupted in cheers, she looked too stunned to speak. Only after the final buzzer sounded and friends and family members hugged her back to reality could she make sense of it all.

“It was a very difficult game because we had to face adversity the whole game long,” she said. “Marquette was extremely aggressive. Pushing, shoving, hacking, grabbing hands down low, and the refs didn’t seem to see that. And with our coach being ejected, that was really difficult to deal with.”

That said, she couldn’t quibble with the outcome.

“That,” she said of Brook’s game-capper, “was a sweet shot.”

Longtime UCLA football coach Terry Donahue was among those watching from a lower-level section filled with Bruins fans.

“I love the way this team plays,” he said. “I’m no expert in basketball, but I just love the way they play defense and hustle around. They smother you. And Kevin Love plays so hard on both ends of the court for a true freshman. I know he’s been trained really well by his dad, but it’s really unusual that a kid would play that hard that young.”

It’s worth noting that Donahue’s career at the school was essentially bracketed by basketball championships. He coached from 1976 to 1995, meaning he arrived a year after John Wooden’s last title and left within a year after Jim Harrick’s team won in 1995.

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sam.farmer@latimes.com