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UW men's basketball: The highs and lows of Ford Field fandom

Adam Hoge  —  3/29/2008 7:39 am

DETROIT — Steve Dobbs and Bill Sanders were so caught up in the University of Wisconsin's run through the first two rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament that they jumped all over the chance to buy tickets to the Midwest Regional to see their team play.

"We got our tickets through a friend here in Detroit on Monday," said Dobbs, an Oconomowoc resident.

It wasn't until Thursday that the friends learned the event was being held in a football stadium, not a basketball arena. On Friday, as the Badgers prepared to face upstart Davidson in their third Sweet 16 appearance under coach Bo Ryan, they discovered the downside of that setup.

"When we picked our tickets up we looked at them and saw we were in the corner," Dobbs said.

That would be the upper deck corner at Ford Field, the home of the NFL's Detroit Lions — commonly known as the nosebleed section.

"We were like, 'Oh well, what the hell,' " Dobbs said before the game. "We are kind of far away but it will be OK, it will be fun."

For the first half, anyway. But then Davidson and star guard Stephen Curry shifted into another gear and ran away with a 73-56 victory over Wisconsin, ending a memorable run for the Big Ten Conference regular-season and tournament champions, who finished 31-5.

Curry finished with 33 points, giving him 103 in three NCAA tournament games, to propel the Wildcats (29-6) — the Cinderella story of the tournament — into an Elite Eight matchup Sunday against Kansas.

The massive attendance for the game — announced at 57,028 — was bolstered by an influx of fans from Wisconsin and Davidson, a well-heeled liberal arts college in North Carolina that paid the way for about one-sixth of its student body of 1,700 to make the trip to Detroit for the weekend, covering their transportation, hotel and game tickets.

Many fans wound up in the upper deck at the stadium, which is actually not that high up; it's just not exactly close to the field, or in this case a court that ran between the 35-yard lines. In fact, because there is very little slope in the first level, some fans there were at least 50 yards away from the court and were stuck with an awkward viewing angle because they were not substantially elevated above the field.

"Our friends bought tickets outside the stadium and they are in the middle and the 33rd row. They were 400 bucks apiece and they are the same $75 tickets as we have," Dobbs said.

The height in the upper deck might have actually resulted in a better view than some of the seats on the first level.

"As long as we are in the same building we're OK," Sanders, a Milwaukee resident, said before the game. "It's cool to be here for the whole thing considering what happened this year and how the team is doing."

It's likely the thousands of Davidson fans in the building had the same idea, as the Wildcats continued their improbable run.

"From their standpoint no one expected them to be here," Dobbs said of Davidson. "From the Badgers' standpoint, they are the same team. No one ever expected them to be here."

And there the Wildcats were, playing like they were accustomed to being in a 78,000-seat arena — a far cry from the 5,700 seats in Belk Arena on the school's campus in Davidson, N.C.

Both sets of fans were wearing red, making their rooting interests difficult to decipher. Likewise, for one night, one could not tell the difference between a school from the mighty Big Ten and a school from the unheralded Southern Conference.

Adam Hoge  —  3/29/2008 7:39 am