KU fans hope St. Louis is gateway to Final Four
St. Louis ? Mason Heilman spends four minutes ascending 630 feet above the Mississippi River for a clear gaze across the St. Louis skyline toward the Edward Jones Dome.
But this isn’t the view he’s here to get. The Free State High School sophomore, sporting a Kansas Jayhawks shirt at the landmark Gateway Arch, is looking forward to his favorite team reaching an even loftier perch by Sunday evening — the Final Four of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
“They can go as high as they want to,” said Heilman, in town with his family for spring break. “They can go all the way up.”
He’s not the only one with high hopes.
Kansas University alumni officials, downtown merchants and tournament organizers are bracing for a Jayhawk onslaught during this weekend’s St. Louis regionals of the tournament.
KU, the region’s No. 4 seed, plays at 6:10 p.m. Friday against the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the No. 9 seed. The winner will play Sunday against either Georgia Tech, the No. 3 seed, or Nevada, the No. 10 seed, for a spot in the Final Four in San Antonio.
Landing party
KU officials are counting on plenty of crimson-and-blue support. The KU Alumni Association already has arranged to block a street in the historic Laclede’s Landing entertainment district, where pep rallies and other events will be conducted a mere block away from the Edward Jones Dome.
Alumni officials were the first to call such arrangements, landing them a prime venue for parties.
Young fans cheer and reach to high-five KU men's basketball player Jeff Graves as the Jayhawks load the bus for a trip to St. Louis in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. The Jayhawks boarded the bus Wednesday and will play Friday against University of Alabama-Birmingham.
“It’s nice to get this kind of attention,” said Kirk Cerny, an association vice president. “You hate to brag, but we’re the biggest game in town.”
Meredyth Nichols sure hopes so.
Nichols owns The Big Bang, a venue billed as “a rock ‘n’ roll, sing-along dueling piano bar,” whose front porch will be open to KU pep rallies and related activities. Another adjacent business, the Morgan Street Brewery, also is taking part.
Together, Nichols said, the two businesses expect to see as many as 2,000 KU fans buying food, downing drinks and tipping servers and bartenders throughout the weekend.
“Everybody involved in the tournament says that Kansas is in the top five in the country in terms of traveling fans,” Nichols said. “That will be fabulous. … We’re certainly glad that Kansas called.”
Nichols said her bar would be catering to the Kansas crowd. Two new specialty drinks are on the menu: a blue margarita, known as “The Jayhawk”; and an as-yet-unnamed crimson beverage resembling a Hurricane.
| Kansas University fans searching for victories this weekend still have some work to do.”Kansas basketball” ranked as the No. 3 “mover” Wednesday on the Yahoo! Search Buzz Index, behind only top-ranked St. Joseph’s and No. 2 Duke.The list is reserved for subjects that have received the biggest jumps in the number of searches conducted. The site doesn’t release raw numbers, but Laura Hanson, a 2001 KU grad who handles some public-relations work for the company, said KU searches had shot up by 119 percent based on searches from March 17 through Wednesday.”People are definitely looking for Kansas now, especially with Kentucky out of the tournament,” said Hanson, of San Francisco.To keep track of KU’s movement, go to buzz.yahoo.com/overall. |
Then there are the 30-plus kegs of Boulevard Wheat beer — more than five times the bar’s usual stock of the brew from Kansas City, Mo. — in the cooler and ready for consumption inside the bar and outside on the blocked-off street.
“We’re planning on KU winning,” she said. “If we sell it all, I will be very, very impressed with the Kansas fan base.”
Game is what counts
Jim Marchiony, an associate athletic director, said that all the KU buzz in town was a good sign. But as he pulled his luggage to the curb outside the team’s Marriott Pavilion Hotel, Marchiony was careful to put the excitement into perspective.
“It’s a great feeling,” he said. “It speaks to the popularity of the University of Kansas and Kansas basketball. Unfortunately, it’s not going to mean anything once we step on the court. UAB doesn’t care that Kansas will have a lot of fans here.
“But it is a great feeling. It’s part of the excitement of being a part of Kansas athletics.”
The Heilman family, from Lawrence, leaves the Gateway Arch after a day of sightseeing in St. Louis. From left are brothers Shelton, Winston and Mason. The Heilmans were visiting Wednesday in St. Louis, site of the Jayhawks' NCAA regional tournament.
The on-the-court excitement begins this afternoon. The Jayhawks are scheduled to conduct a practice, from 2:10 p.m. to 3 p.m., that is free and open to the public.
Hurried return
Mason and his fellow Heilmans — his parents, Steve and Sally, his grandmother Carol Heilman and brothers Shelton and Winston Heilman — plan to be there.
“It’s fun that we have a team that can do so well — to get as far as they’ve gotten in the past,” Mason said. “To go to the Final Four three years in a row would be pretty awesome. It’s pretty plausible.”
Adds Winston: “Yeah, since Kentucky lost.”
Then Shelton: “And Roy (Williams) left.”
Either way, Steve Heilman will load up the family Friday morning and hit Interstate 70 for the trip back to Lawrence.
Coach Bill Self’s Jayhawks may be on the way up, but the family needs to hurry its way back.
“We need to get home before the game’s on,” he said.
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