Thoughts on tickets, fans and bands

Of the 3,500 tickets alloted to each school by the NCAA, Arizona students are getting the worst portion of those tickets. We get 350 tickets. Kentucky students were given 1,000 and Minnesota gave out tickets to however many students ordered them.

Although I guess when you consider that Arizona's McKale Center has the fewest students per seats in the nation, it's only fitting to screw them out of the biggest weekend of the year, too ...

Along that line, what I saw at the welcome home celebration for the Final Four-bound Arizona men's basketball team on Sunday night really encouraged me. Ten thousand people bordering on insanity - most of them students.

Maybe that's why the place was so loud. The students were so close to the floor they were screaming out of pure excitement. And that gave me an idea.

So without further ado, here's my simple two-step program to make McKale Center a little more like a basketball arena and a little less like an AARP meeting.

1. Put the students on the floor. Right now they're so far away they might as well be watching the game at a sports bar in Tubac. Here's what they should do: Take press row and put it up on the second level, then give sections 14, 15 and 16 to the students all the way to the floor.

The press guys won't complain; we'd be closer to the snack bars, anyway.

2. Give the pep band some different sheet music. How many times can they play the Offspring's "Come Out and Play" and still think they're cool? Take a lesson from the Stanford band and play more than four or five songs a game ...

With all due respect to Miles Simon and his gutty performance against Providence in the Southeast Regional final, A.J. Bramlett was the real MVP of the region. He came up huge in the Tournment on the defensive boards. He is averaging a double-double and is the leading rebounder of the Tournament.

Head coach Lute Olson said that in his 40 years of coaching, he can't remember a guy improving from the start of a season to the finish like Bramlett has ...

Don't count out Arizona in terms of a national championship. Sure, they play a really tough North Carolina team on Saturday. South Carolina was a team run by three quality guards and they beat Kentucky twice this year.

Arizona has Mike Bibby, Miles Simon and Jason Terry at the guard slots. If that's not a quality three guard rotation, I don't know what is.

This should be interesting ...

Sports editor Craig Degel shares his thoughts on sports and life every Wednesday in the Wildcat.