Thursday, March 12, 1998 | 10:41 a.m.
HARTFORD, Conn. -- It's only fitting that the event known as March Madness be held in a building on Asylum Street.
Things are literally insane at the Hartford Civic Center as UNLV's return to the NCAA Tournament has become the hottest ticket in town.
The Rebels, who play No. 8 Princeton at 4:40 p.m. today, are involved in the most intriguing matchup in this part of the East Regional, which includes North Carolina, the nation's No. 1-ranked team.
Most of the nation will see the prime-time telecast on CBS. The game will be shown live on KLAS (Channel 8). But because of its proximity to Hartford, Princeton fans are desperately searching for tickets to the game at the 15,418-seat Civic Center. And they're not having much luck after making the three-hour drive to Connecticut.
Like UNLV, Princeton only was allotted 350 tickets, more than one-third of which went to the students.
"We're getting a lot of questions, but we don't have any tickets," a Civic Center box office employee said.
The same is true at Ticketworld, which brokers tickets to sporting events and theatres. The demand has far exceeded the supply.
"We're just looking to buy," said Rod Bouchard, Ticketworld's manager. "We've been getting hundreds of calls."
Bouchard said his company is paying up to $750 for seats close to the floor. The face value for the three-session strip is $90.
"This is the hottest ticket ever in Connecticut," Bouchard said of this evening's session that includes UNLV-Princeton and Eastern Michigan-Michigan State.
Inside the Civic Center Mall, you could tell it was tourney time. A once-empty store was now an NCAA souvenir shop with T-shirts, sweatshirts and hats emblazoned with the tournament logo moving swiftly.
UNLV items were moving, too. But the hot stuff was the tourney T-shirt that had all eight first-round participants' names on it, along with North Carolina and Princeton gear. One fan looking for a Navy hat was advised to check out the Armed Forces Recruiting Center.
"We don't see much UNLV stuff here," said one of the employees at the store. "But now that they're in the tournament, they'll probably sell well."
Over in the mall's food court, Kevin Surratt was trying to fill out his NCAA Tournament bracket for his office pool. He was going with Bill Bayno's Rebels tonight, but he thinks the run will be a short one.
"I think they'll beat Princeton," he said. "After that, I don't know. I don't think they could beat Carolina if they met."
That wouldn't be until the Sweet 16 next week. Tonight, the focus is squarely on the Ivy Leaguers from central New Jersey who are sporting a gaudy 26-1 record and are favored by six points in Mexico and in the offshore betting establishments. Betting on the game in Nevada sports books is prohibited.
Mike Civitello was waiting for UNLV to arrive for its evening practice at the Civic Center. Civitello, who claims to be a Rebels fan going back to the 1980s and was decked out in a red UNLV hat, brought his 4 1/2-year-old daughter, Amanda, and his wife, Terri, from their home in Higganum, some 25 miles from Hartford, to see his team get ready.
"I'm real excited," he said. "When they announced the bracket, I jumped out of my chair.
"Living out here, it was tough to hear about them the past few years. I gotta listen to all that UConn crap all the time. I can't stand UConn."
But not everyone here is focused on the NCAAs. A woman was spotted in the mall Wdnesday wearing a Colorado State sweatshirt. Not only was she at the wrong tournament (the Rams are in the NIT), she was in the wrong mall.
With the NIT game being played in Minnesota, she would have been better off shopping at the Mall of America in Minneapolis.
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