Boston Final Four Will Make History

[Scamp]

A look forward:
Patricia Henry admits Boston's organizing committee didn't know about the significance of the 2006 Final Four when the team submitted its bid in the summer of 2001.

Five cities -- Boston, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Phoenix, and St. Louis -- had reached finalist status for the 2005-07 Women's Final Fours.

But 2006 was the big one -- the 25th anniversary of the NCAA Women's Final Four and the 100th anniversary of the NCAA. Not that Henry, the president of the Board of Directors of the Boston Local Organizing Committee and the senior associate director of athletics at Harvard, and her compatriots knew anything about it.

They do now.
A look back:

Kim Mulkey-Robertson arrived in New Orleans still smarting from the pain of a pair of last-second free throws. Tennessee had just eliminated her Baylor team, after a scrum led to the tiebreaking foul shots and knocked the Bears out in the Sweet 16 of the 2004 NCAA Tournament.

Mulkey-Robertson, who grew up in Hammond, La., had come home for this Final Four, back to the state in which she played and coached for 19 years at Louisiana Tech. The Lady Techsters always drew great crowds, fans crammed into arenas to see a team that won two of the first six NCAA championships and made the Tournament in every one of those 19 years. But she hadn't seen anything like this.

''It just made me reflect back on how far we've come," said Mulkey-Robertson. ''Looking at the crowd, looking at the entertainment. [I was] proud. Proud that I'm a part of this great game; proud that they want it to be the best, that they want to expose little girls to it at the highest level.

''I saw fans that were there for their school, but I saw fans that were there for women's basketball. I think fans earlier just pulled for their teams. Now it's an event, People plan for it."

http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/womens_basketball/articles/2005/11/10/leaps_and_bounds?mode=PF

[swok34]

Excellent article!

''Every aspect of the game has changed," Goestenkors said. ''When I do speaking engagements, I always tell the crowd that, if they haven't seen women's basketball lately, they haven't seen the game. It's so much more physical, more athletic. The coaches are better; the players are better. More fans, more excitement, more pressure. It's an entirely different game than it was 10 years ago."

[Scamp]

Final Four at a glance
When: Semifinals are Sunday, April 2, 7 and 9:30 p.m.; championship is Tuesday, April 4, 8:30 p.m.
Where: TD Banknorth Garden.

Tickets: Tickets offered to the general public through a random drawing last spring are sold out. Community Contributor Packages, which include game tickets, hospitality, parking, and VIP party invitations, are available for $6,400 each by contacting the Boston Local Organizing Committee at 617-423-2006 or dstirling@masports.org.

http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/womens_basketball/articles/2005/11/10/final_four_at_a_glance/

The NCAA women's basketball Final Four has "arrived." $6,400.00 VIP ticket packages! :cool:

[brolewis]

I was hoping to go this year, but I don't think I'll be going the VIP route...

[ChiBears]

We started going to the Final Four when it was in San Antonio because it was close. We enjoyed ourselves so much, on almost a lark, we signed up for the ticket lottery. We have gone to every FF since then.

Sadly, when we opened our reply letter this year, we were not one of the ones chosen for tickets. (Darn moving to a smaller arena!) We've been searching on Ebay, and the tickets are getting on up there, especially considering that no one knows where their ticket assignments are yet. You're basically buying them blind. Best bet is they are the nosebleed cheap seats, but that's where we sat in SA and Atlanta and it is still awesome to be there.

ONe of the neatest things is to people-watch. You can see big name college coaches, WNBA coaches, WNBA players and "legends of the game."

Here's hoping we can get ahold of some nice tickets. I really want to go to Boston!

[brolewis]

When I was preparing to go to the Final Four last year, a week before the event, I looked on eBay and there were literally hundreds of tickets available and all of those knew their seat location. While you may not want to wait until the week before, my plan for this year is to take a week of vacation and enjoy Boston. If I'm able to get tickets, or if Baylor is there and I get tickets through them, great. If not, I'm still in Boston.

[Scamp]

When I was preparing to go to the Final Four last year, a week before the event, I looked on eBay and there were literally hundreds of tickets available and all of those knew their seat location.
I'll bet those tickets were being sold by UConn we-always-play-in-the-Final-Four Huskies fans!

Mel Greenberg had a very funny piece in his blog last April about Geno Auriemma's bewilderment on arriving in Indianapolis to stay among the masses.http://womhoops.blogspot.com/2005/04/masses-arrive.html

[ChiBears]

I would agree with your surmise. In New Orleans, my partner and I sat in the "at large" section (not the school section) behind a older gentleman and his daughter from UConn. (Actually, we were totally surrounded by UConn fans, which was the one team we both said we didn't want to see win it again...)

We began talking and I asked the fellow if they followed women's college ball in general or if they were just UConn fans. He acted like he couldn't quite understand my question, so I asked him, "If UConn hadn't made it to the Final Four, would you have come anyway?" He basically said "no way." Of course, he couldn't really grasp a Final Four without UConn...

However, to be totally fair, we met some UConn fans in Indianapolis who had come with a group of Huskie fans on a bus. The woman told us that they took a vote as a group or club or whatever they were and decided to go ahead and come to the FF since it was so close. (I also half suspect they wanted to root against their "evil empire" opponent :D )

As for waiting to purchase the tickets until later in the year, that's probably the smart thing to do, but I am nervous about their availability this year. The arena is not a domed stadium and holds far less people than the previous 4 venues. And with Tennessee predicted to have such an awesome team, if they make it to the FF, the Tennessee fans alone will scarf up most of the tickets.

Anyway, we'll just play it by ear, but Boston is such a neat place to visit with all its history, that I really, really want to go back.

Oh well, as I said, we'll just have to see how it goes...