Two students with perplexed looks plastered to their faces strolled up to the Viejas Arena box office yesterday afternoon at around 1 p.m.
“Sold out?” one of them said out loud as he read the big, bold, black and white sign. “For Wyoming?!”
The two couldn’t believe it. But that’s the way San Diego State is nowadays.
SDSU has the No. 4-ranked basketball team in the nation. It is 20-0. And it’s also the hottest ticket in town.
“I heard the line wrapped all the way around the ARC,” senior guard D.J. Gay said. “That’s amazing. That’s really crazy to think about. It just goes to show how many people we do have behind us.”
The line of students began at 4:30 a.m., a ticket office official said yesterday. By 7:30 a.m., when the ticket office officially opened, there were more than 1,000 students waiting in line to snag their free tickets. By 9:15 a.m., the school had sold out its allotment of about 2,500 student tickets, the official said.
“It’s just amazing that all the hard work is paying off and people want to come watch us play,” senior forward Malcolm Thomas said. “It’s just crazy to me.”
It’s especially crazy because these tickets were for Saturday’s game against Wyoming, a team boasting an 8-11 overall record and an abysmal 1-4 record in Mountain West Conference play. The last two times the Cowboys came to Viejas Arena, a combined 13,034 people showed up for the two matches.
On Saturday, 12,414 people will be in attendance.
“We appreciate all the involvement and belief from our students,” head coach Steve Fisher said.
Journalism senior Beau Bearden, also known as “Geckshow,” the gecko in the front row of SDSU’s highly touted student section, said yesterday’s line and immediate sellout are just a glimpse of the craziness that could happen for future games.
“I was hearing people talking about how they’re going to come at noon on Sunday,” Bearden said of the day before tickets go on sale for games such as BYU next month. “Which is crazy.”
The Aztecs will take on No. 9 BYU at 7 p.m. tomorrow in the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah.
