Slive stopped by press row about 30 minutes before No. 2 seed Oklahoma and No. 3 seed Syracuse were scheduled to tip off at FedExForum. I told Slive I thought I saw him on TV sitting courtside at another NCAA tournament game on Thursday night.

"Phoenix," Slive told me. "We flew in this morning."

Slive said he and a few other NCAA committee members are flying to Boston tonight to attend Saturday's East Region finals. They'll be in Indianapolis on Sunday for the Midwest Region finals, and then they're off to Detroit for the Final Four.

• FedExForum was more than half empty about 10 minutes before tipoff. It's either a late-arriving crowd, or there's going to be plenty of empty seats on TV. Most of the tickets were probably gobbled up by North Carolina fans, who are apparently watching the early game in bars on Beale Street. The NCAA released about 2,000 remaining tickets for the South Region games on Wednesday.