I love college basketball, ahead of everything except my mom, my wife, Hot Pockets and Mandy Moore (apologies to my three sisters). But the NCAA isn’t doing such a sure-fire job of selling next year’s action.

This year’s tournament has provided a lot of competitive and exciting basketball, prompting me to look at where some of the games are happening next year. Luckily enough, first and second-round action returns to my home state of Minnesota in 2009.

I found information on gophersports.com saying the NCAA would start selling tickets Monday morning. “Cool,” I thought, as I ran across this article on Sunday evening. I’ll wake up tomorrow, keep an eye on the Web site and snatch up a pair of tickets as soon as they become available.

Monday rolls around and I roll into work, checking out their Web site to see if tickets are available yet. Still nothing. I check a few more times over the next several hours but nothing changes on the page where ticket information is supposed to be listed.

What’s worse, there’s no communication from the NCAA or the host sites on the delay. A few people call the local university hosts (in Minneapolis and Portland) and log onto the NCAA message board to share what little information they received.

The University of Minnesota sends me a pretty vague e-mail response to my inquiry about what’s the dealeo:

The NCAA website is currently updating the link to purchase tickets for the 2009 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tourney. Please check back to their website periodically to further purchase your order. Thank you for your patience.
- Goldy [Gopher]

At least eight hours later, they must still be updating that link? Come on Goldy, you’re better than that (Spin your head! Spin your head!).

Is it the end of the world? Certainly not. All I’m asking for is a simple update to your Web site to let people know what’s going on.

It could go a little something like this: “Hey, we apologize to fans looking for 2009 NCAA First and Second-round tickets. Our hamster died. You can expect ticket information to be posted Wednesday after we’ve had a proper ceremony for Fuzzy.”

Not only is there no mention of what’s going on with the ticket information, but there isn’t much in the way of contact information over at ncaa.com.

Maybe it’s all just part of “March Madness.”