In the hours that followed the Kansas University volleyball team’s thrilling and somewhat improbable victory over top-seeded USC in the NCAA Tournament regional final last weekend in San Diego, hundreds of overjoyed KU fans began making plans to road trip to Omaha, Nebraska, this week to watch their Jayhawks compete in the program’s first Final Four.

Don’t count on any such plans being easy.

Because this year’s Final Four is in Nebraska, a mere 59 miles away from the campus of the University of Nebraska — the event’s No. 4 seed and KU’s Thursday opponent — thousands of Cornhusker fans scooped up tickets long before KU even knew it would be playing.

Nebraska’s victory over Washington last weekend was the first of the four regional finals. That gave Husker fans a jump-start on the ordering process, and, according to sources familiar with Final Four ticket sales, the event sold out sometime last week.

There’s more. According to KU associate athletic director Jim Marchiony, the NCAA only reserved 200 tickets per school for the event. After KU took care of the ticket needs of the families of the athletes and coaching staff, that left roughly 100 tickets for KU to sell to donors and season-ticket holders.

“There are people who have ordered through us who we will not be able to accommodate,” Marchiony said. “It’s certainly disappointing.”

The issue, according to Marchiony, is not that thousands of fired-up Nebraska fans were the first to lay down their credit cards to purchase tickets for the matches that will take place at Omaha’s CenturyLink Center. The issue lies in the planning.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the NCAA did not reserve more than 200 tickets per team for an event played in a 17,000-seat arena,” Marchiony said. “But in the NCAA’s defense, this is the same procedure it has followed in the past, and I don’t believe the NCAA volleyball championships are ever sold out.”

In an effort to find a solution that would benefit as many KU fans as possible, Marchiony said KU had been in contact with the NCAA multiple times during the past couple of days, with the latest contact coming late Monday morning.

“We’ve been trying to get more since Madison Rigdon’s final kill (that beat USC on Saturday night),” Marchiony said. “But they can’t take tickets back. The bottom line is that the NCAA did not save us any more than 200 tickets. I would advise people who are looking for tickets to go to the secondary market.”

A quick check of Internet ticket brokers Monday afternoon revealed that tickets for the Thursday-Saturday championship event were going for anywhere from $212 for the upper corners to $765 for lower-level center court.

Fans willing to roll the dice certainly could make the trip anyway and hope to secure tickets from fans of the losing team in Thursday’s 6 p.m. match or, should KU win, from disappointed Cornhusker fans not interested in attending Saturday’s title match. Marchiony said tickets for the entire weekend — both semifinals Thursday and Saturday’s championship match — were sold in a three-game package. On Monday, the NCAA made available a limited amount of Saturday-only tickets via TicketMaster, but those, like the others, sold out quickly.

No. 9 overall seed Kansas (30-2) will play No. 4 seed Nebraska (30-4) at 8:30 p.m. Thursday. The winner will advance to the national title match Saturday against the winner of the showdown between No. 2 Minnesota (30-4) and No. 3 Texas (29-2).