Bobby Tomlinson had his hands full at 7:30 a.m. Monday. The athletic department employee was shepherding a line stretching to more than 1,000 people in the parking lot in front of the Bryan Athletic Administration building.
“Please move to the side,” he yelled as he ushered the line to the grass surrounding the parking lot.
Students clad in hunting jackets and wrapped in blankets to protect themselves from the wet, 40-degree weather obliged Tomlinson while keeping an eye fixed on the ticket office, waiting for student tickets to Saturday’s MSU-Mississippi basketball game at Humphrey Coliseum.
The athletic department began giving student tickets at 7:20 a.m. and had distributed all 3,000 of them by 9:15 a.m., said athletic department spokesman Mike Nemeth.
When the Mississippi State men’s basketball team played Mississippi in Oxford Jan. 5, the Rebel faithful couldn’t fill up Tad Smith Coliseum, the SEC’s smallest coliseum.
The Rebels could take a lesson from the Bulldogs, as the game has been sold out since Jan. 5. Athletic department officials expect one of the largest crowds in history to pack The Hump on Saturday.
“We’ve had several crowds so far this year to be in the top ten of the crowds we’ve had ever,” Nemeth said. “The demand is very, very high.”
Students still have a shot to get in the game if they show up at The Hump before the game with their student ID, Nemeth said. The ushers will let students in depending on how many seats are available.
Brian Pugh arrived at 4:50 a.m. so he could secure tickets for himself and his mother and brother, who are driving from Gulfport for the game. Pugh, a freshman kinesiology major, said he watched Timmy Bowers lead Harrison Central High School to a state title when Pugh was a freshman.
“Timmy was awesome in high school,” Pugh said.
Justin Castanza, who arrived at the same time as Pugh, said he learned his lesson when he tried to get a ticket for the Jan. 13 MSU-Kentucky game.
“I got here at 8 a.m. for the Kentucky game and I was a mile that way,” Castanza said as he pointed toward the Sanderson Center. “I decided I’d be on time today.”
Tomlinson, a 14-year veteran of the athletic department, said he had not seen lines like the one he dealt with Monday since the 1996, when the Bulldogs fielded a basketball team that went to the Final Four.
Nemeth said the excitement on campus rivals anything he has ever seen during his 19-year career at MSU, including the storied 1996 basketball season.
“For three or four weeks now, people have been picking up their tickets and selling out the coliseum,” Nemeth said. “As far as maintaining enthusiasm, I’ve never seen it like this.”