Demand for Tickets Greater Than Supply

The Women’s Final Four has become so popular, it’s bursting at its seams.

The event moves into domed stadiums in 2002, San Antonio’s Alamodome, and 2003, Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, which will alleviate painful ticket crunches for participating schools.

For this week’s event in St. Louis’ 19,404-seat Savvis Center, however, the allotment for each school was 800 tickets.

“We could have sold several thousand more Final Four tickets,” said Geno Auriemma, Connecticut’s coach.

Said Southwest Missouri State player Tara Mitchem, “I got calls from people I don’t even know asking me for tickets.”

Said Notre Dame Coach Muffet McGraw, “At last year’s Final Four [at Philadelphia’s 20,000-seat First Union Center], I saw serious scalping going on.”

The ticket crunch was most painful for Southwest Missouri State partisans, several thousand of whom drove the 200 miles from Springfield to watch their team practice Thursday.

Every women’s Final Four since 1993 has sold out, most of them a year in advance. The last one that didn’t was the 1992 event at the Sports Arena.

Auriemma, on the recruiting of freshman Diana Taurasi from Chino Don Lugo high school:

“Diana’s father doesn’t speak very good English. Neither did my parents. Her dad was born very near where I was born, in Italy. So with her folks, a lot of the recruiting process was in Italian.”

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ESPN’s seven-year, $19-million deal with the NCAA for the women’s tournament expires after next season, but negotiations--for substantially more money--will begin in about a month, an ESPN spokesman said.

“We haven’t submitted a dollar number yet, but we’re looking for an 11-year deal,” the spokesman said. “We definitely want to keep it.”