From the floor of Carver-Hawkeye

It’s practice-and-press-conference day in Iowa City.

Oklahoma has already come and gone, being first up as the No. 1 seed here in this NCAA Tournament regional. Sherri Coale and her Sooners will take on Prairie View A&M in their tournament opener at 6 p.m. Sunday.

I’ll have some highlights from the Oklahoma and Prairie View press conferences a little later this evening, but Iowa is practicing on the Carver-Hawkeye Arena floor right now. Watching the Hawkeyes got me thinking about a couple things.

* There is actually a decent smattering of people here watching the Hawkeyes. That bodes well for tomorrow’s crowd, considering it’s a beautiful spring day here in Iowa and they’re predicting rain for the next couple days. That folks would decide to come and sit inside to watch the Hawkeyes practice tells me that there will be a decent crowd Sunday evening.

* Officials here have said that 4,000 tickets have already sold for Sunday’s games. That would fall well short of the attendance numbers the last time the Sooners played an NCAA Tournament regional at the Lloyd Noble Center, but after seeing some of the crowds at the women’s games being played today, a crowd of 4,000-plus would look mighty good. No team wants a sterile environment for its NCAA Tournament opener.