‘Queen City’ Gets Royal Treatment This Week

Cheers erupted in the athletic ticket office at Davidson College when the NCAA tournament’s Charlotte subregional field was revealed.

The host school’s ticket staff expected one of North Carolina’s four Atlantic Coast Conference teams to play at the Charlotte Coliseum in games beginning today, but Duke and North Carolina both being at the site stirred even more excitement.

Then reality hit.

“As soon as those announcements were made, the phones began blowing up and the computers began blowing up with orders,” said Jamie Hendricks, Davidson athletic ticket manager. “We kind of just looked around at each other, like, ‘OK, pull up your bootstraps, because it’s time to get to work now.’ ”

Charlotte is the center of attention in a hoops-crazed state, playing host to Duke and North Carolina, among eight teams at the subregional. Not surprisingly, the first- and second-round games at the 23,000-seat arena sold out quickly, prompting eager fans to search the Internet for tickets, driving up brokers’ prices.

Hotels and restaurants prepared for waves of Blue Devil and Tar Heel supporters, Charlotte being less than 150 miles from Durham and Chapel Hill, and local officials said it wouldn’t be business as usual while the Queen City is North Carolina’s basketball king.

“With Duke and North Carolina being here, the Charlotte Coliseum is going to be the place to be in North Carolina,” said Molly Hedrick of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. “The fan base coming, whenever you have something like this, is going to be huge. It’s just wonderful for Charlotte.”

The Division I men’s basketball committee rewarded ACC regular-season champion North Carolina (27-4) and ACC tournament winner Duke (25-5) with what amount to home games.

Second-ranked North Carolina is seeded first in the Syracuse Regional, and third-ranked Duke has the top seeding in the Austin Regional. The Tar Heels play Oakland of Rochester, Mich., in the opening round. Duke plays Delaware State.

“I’ve always wanted the regular season to be extremely important,” North Carolina Coach Roy Williams said. “Any advantage you can give someone for doing a great job during the regular season is great.”

Thanks to the committee, Charlotte is the hottest spot in North Carolina.

“One of the things we’ve done is created a little bit of a problem for the people in Charlotte,” said Bob Bowlsby, Iowa athletic director and chairman of the committee. “With two No. 1 seeds there, obviously, it’s going to be a prime ticket.”

The subregional was sold out by 9:10 a.m. Monday, said Hendricks of Davidson College, about 19 miles north of Charlotte.

The eight schools participating in subregionals can buy as many as 550 tickets each, and must buy at least 350, for each round. Schools receive a small ticket allotment for alumni groups, and the NCAA retains some tickets, but Hendricks said the majority were available for sale to the public.

Each is priced at $154, but brokers have sought as much as $2,500 on the Internet. Tickets have been on sale since last March, and only about 2,000 remained when fans learned Duke and North Carolina would play in Charlotte.

Duke and North Carolina have enrollments of 6,347 and 25,972, respectively.

“It would have been nice to have more available because the demand is so great, but these tickets have been on sale for quite some time,” Hendricks said. “The people who really won are the people who took a gamble last March and bought tickets.

“They kind of anticipated that you’d get at least one ACC team here, and they hoped it would be their team. Those people got great seats because they got into the deal early.”

And the others?

“We had several thousands of people calling us, trying to get the last tickets,” Hendricks said. “They were swallowed up pretty fast.”

That’s good news for area sports bars, said Hedrick, of the visitors’ authority.

“Folks coming into the Charlotte area are going to stay at the hotels and spend their money in the restaurants,” she said. “It’s definitely going to have a positive effect on our economy.”

Chris Long, district manager of Fox and Hound restaurants in Charlotte, planned for a big weekend at the chain’s downtown location. He anticipated fans packing the three-level building to watch games on 12 big-screen TVs, and many wearing Duke and North Carolina colors arrived Thursday.

“This is basketball USA down here, and you have two No. 1 seeds in Charlotte,” Long said. “There’s a great buzz going on right now.”