UF students turned away at the gate before tipoff

On By Littum

UF students waited outside for hours hoping to see the Gators’ No. 8 battle against Tennessee No. 1. As the match tipped off, many were turned away outside the O’Connell Center.

GAINESVILLE — Florida basketball’s game Tuesday against Tennessee is the program’s biggest home game in years.

As such, it’s a tough ticket.

For some students, it turned out to be a little too hard.

UFPD officers turned crowds of students away from Gate 3 of the O’Connell Center and moved others out of the student section before notifying the volunteers.

The Gators box office advertised $35 tickets for fans to sit in the student section. Normally, the lower bowl seats between sections 7 and 15 in the O’Connell Center are reserved for students.

However, UF students don’t return from the spring semester until Jan. 13, so the box office decided to sell tickets in the student section for the Tennessee, North Florida and Stetson games. According to a UF spokesman, 900 student tickets were awarded for Tuesday’s game.

Freshman Lucas Garcia said he was not made aware of this. The business administration major waited for 45 minutes outside the O’Connell Center before being told by UFPD that no more students would be allowed inside.

“I feel a little misled,” Garcia said. “If they had written that in the email, it would have encouraged me to show up earlier.”

Some students showed up earlier. Senior Angel Cannon arrived at the O’Connell Center around 17 Tuesday. He has never experienced problems getting in before. Like Garcia, Cannon was not told that student tickets were limited to the game.

Cannon called the situation “absolutely frustrating.”

“This is first and foremost a university. It should be to prioritize the students instead of everyone else, because we are the ones going to the games. We are the ones paying tuition,” Cannon said.

He continued, noting how the “Rowdy Reptiles” are usually the rowdiest fans in attendance.

“If you want to win home games, you have to have a rowdy crowd, and if you don’t have students in the student section, why even call it a student section?” Cannon wondered.

The economics major and accounting major called the game “the highlight of his week” and said he came back to Gainesville a few days early for the showdown.

“I had just come back from a trip and when I was off I thought, ‘I’m going to go back to varsity and really enjoy my senior year,'” Cannon said.

Around tipoff at 7:00 p.m., UFPD installed barricades outside Gate 3 and refused to let new students in line. An announcement stated that only the next 100 students in line would be admitted.

Two minutes later, the police said that there were no more student tickets.

Garcia believed there were only 50 students ahead of him in line, when police said 100 more would be admitted. The freshman believes he was misled on that as well.

He believes that more gates should be opened for students to ease the queues.

“The fact that there’s only one gate for an entire student section is kind of scary. I think having two lines will be more even,” Garcia said. “People can know earlier if they can join the game.”

8. Florida currently leads No. 1 Tennessee in the second half.

Noah Ram covers Gainesville-area high school sports and University of Florida athletics for The Gainesville Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at [email protected] and follow him @Noah_ram1 on X/Twitter.