This year, as most know, the PAC-12 Women's Tournament will be held at the Key Arena in Seattle, a cozy venue, one-time home to the NBA Sonics and later, the WNBA Storm.
Dates and Schedules
The dates are Thursday March 7th through Sunday, March 10th. Here is a link to the PAC-12 Tournament page, which has a bracket with times, and current standings. Here's a recap:
- Thursday: four games in two sessions (noon to 4:30, 6 to 10:30) among the lowest eight seeds, eliminating four of the twelve teams.
- Friday: four games in two sessions (same times) among the remaining eight teams. The #1 seed plays in the first session, #2 in the second session.
- Saturday: two semi-final games, 6pm and 8:30pm.
- Sunday: the championship game, 5pm.
(Note that the late Sunday game-time means you can't fly home to the Bay Area Sunday night. With the game ending about 7pm, even if you don't stay for the net-cutting and general hooplah, the earliest departure you could schedule would be 9:30pm. The last nonstop to SFO departs at 8:50. So plan on an early Monday departure.)
Thursday and Friday are "iron-butt" days, many hours of basketball. Some fans, confident that their team won't play Thursday and wanting to save some time and money, will not arrive until Friday.
Saturday and Sunday afford plenty of free time to explore and enjoy Seattle's many attractions. For a list of some of those attractions see our Travel Page
Tickets
Buy reserved seats near other Stanford fans through Stanford The Stanford ticket office has sold out its allotment.See next paragraph for a deal on GA seats. Or you could contact any other PAC-12 school's ticket office (see our main page for links to all of them) hoping for decent reserved seats. For instance one might hope that either Arizona school would have unsold tickets still.
The PAC-12 is also making general-admission seats available on a "flex plan": $32 gets you four vouchers that can be used for GA seating in any of the six sessions. The general admission seats include the areas directly behind the baskets as well as the usual corner and rafter seats. Click here to view the seating chart and purchase.
Accommodations
The PAC-12 has a deal with the Crown Plaza. Click this link and fill in your dates to book a room at the Crown Plaza for $139 to $179 a night. The Crown Plaza is a high-rise building in the center of downtown, at 6th and Seneca. It is a five-block walk to the start of the Monorail at 5th and Pine.
The Seattle Monorail runs between 5th and Pine and Seattle Center, location of the Key Arena, every 10 minutes until 9pm Thursday—and thus, shuts down before the end of the last game that day. It runs until 11pm Friday and Saturday.
There are many hotels much closer to Seattle Center. This link to TripAdvisor is a list of hotels centered on Seattle Center, sorted by distance. You can easily re-sort by price and by ratings. Here is a similar list from Kayak.com.
Update: we have verbal recommendations from friends of FBC members for Hampton Inn and Suites, an easy walk to the arena; and for the Marqueen Hotel, which is even closer.
