Update on Penn - St. Joe's tickets

Saturday night's final Big 5 matchup for Penn is getting closer and closer to a sell-out. Penn Athletics sent another email to students Friday afternoon advertising that just 53 student tickets remained, and I've heard that a similar amount of general admission tickets remain as well.

UPDATE: Penn Athletics tweeted this afternoon that its general admission tickets are SOLD OUT, adding that if more tickets become available before gametime tomorrow, they will announce it on twitter.

Those figures represent Penn's half of the roughly 8,700 seats. St. Joseph's website still allows the purchase of up to 25 tickets, but only corner seats remain online. Last year's edition of this matchup drew over 8,000 on the official attendance.

Just before Penn's practice Friday afternoon, coach Jerome Allen said he hopes his players are getting hyped for a Big 5 matchup regardless of ticket sales.

"The crowd and it being full to capacity is great — it will add to the atmosphere of it being a Big 5 game for us at home, but that can’t be our sole motivation," he said.

Nonetheless, he said he's excited to see a strong contingent come to support the Quakers. Penn Athletics is planning a "whiteout" for the Palestra. The first 400 students in the door Saturday night will get a free whiteout t-shirt.

"It’s cool," said Allen, who couldn't remember if anything similar happened while he played at Penn in the mid-90s. "It’s great for our guys, it’s great for campus. I appreciate people taking an interest in what’s going on in the gym. It’s great for West Philly, it’s great for the Big 5. I’m quite sure that if I wasn’t sitting in the seat that I’ll be sitting in, I would probably be sitting in that section with one of those shirts on. It’s a good time"