More than 150 students have packed up their “We Are Georgetown” T-shirts and are leaving campus today en route to East Rutherford, N.J., for the men’s basketball team’s Sweet 16 matchup with Vanderbilt Friday night.
Georgetown’s athletic department allocated 150 tickets for the game for student fans, 50 of which went to Hoya Blue for distribution. One hundred more were sold Tuesday morning to fans camped out at the ticket office in McDonough Gymnasium.
Hoya Blue chose to sell their tickets along with a road trip package, with a $132 tickets that included passes to both of Friday’s games at the Continental Airlines Arena, as well as the Elite Eight game on Sunday between Friday’s East Regional winners.
“Essentially, you buy a ticket for three basketball games and hope your team plays in two of them,” said Nick Sementelli (SFS ’09), Hoya Blue’s personnel officer.
Those students who bought their tickets through Hoya Blue paid an additional $60 for bus transportation and hotel accommodations at the local Howard Johnson for two nights.
The athletic department’s tickets went on sale on Tuesday morning, but committed fans began lining up outside the ticket office window on Monday afternoon, and many stayed the night.
Nicole Cronin (SFS ’10) arrived at McDonough at 6:30 p.m. Monday night to begin her wait. Cronin had gone to the Big East tournament in New York City during spring break, and enjoyed it so much that she knew she couldn’t miss this big weekend.
“People were blasting music all night on the iPod speakers that someone had brought with them and playing games,” Cronin said. “A few people came with sleeping bags and pillows, but no one slept much.”
Several members of the basketball team, including forward Jeff Green, guard Tyler Crawford and forward Patrick Ewing Jr., all juniors, even stopped by to greet the fans. Ewing delighted the crowd for about an hour with his DJ skills on one fan’s iPod speakers.
Cronin slept only a few hours but was pleasantly surprised when Georgetown’s head coach, John Thompson III, arrived in the morning with McDonald’s breakfast foods for the patient fans.
For the Hoyas’ diehard fans, the chance to see the team advance outweighed any concerns about missing classes. A bus carrying Hoya Blue’s members is leaving at 1 p.m. and several other students left as early as Thursday night.
“It’s possible that some people might miss some class,” said Sementelli, who will not be missing any classes today. “That’s between individuals, their schedules and their professors.”
Once in New Jersey, Sementelli expects that, although there are few planned activities aside from the games, “students will stick together,” going out to eat and generally “getting pumped up.”
“For us it’s really about being as loud as possible. For one, when we get comments from people watching the game that they could hear us … that’s a good thing. That means we’re the loudest. We’re looking to be a really loud, physical and visible presence so our team knows we’re there, and maybe to intimidate our opponents a little bit,” Sementelli said.