This trip to Tucson (and Phoenix) was centered around the Illinois vs Arizona basketball game, which was played on Sunday November 10, 2019. As I mentioned in my planning post, Annie is an Arizona alum and I’m an Illinois alum. While our two schools play each other every once in a while, it’s been 12 years since the last game. So it was pretty special when we learned the two schools would be playing a home and home series in 2019 and 2020. Annie’s parents are also Illinois alums so they joined us on the trip to see our schools battle on the hardwood!

There was a definite buzz in the air as we walked up to the McKale Memorial Center on campus. It was early in the season, but both Illinois and Arizona were unbeaten and Arizona was ranked in the Top 25. Even though 3 out of 4 people in our group were wearing Illini orange, the Arizona fans were very friendly and welcoming. It was an outstanding environment!

In this post I detail out how I purchased the tickets (and saved a little money) as well as how the game turned out.

Purchasing Tickets

Getting tickets to a basketball game at the University of Arizona is pretty difficult. Basketball is king in Tucson and most seats are held by season ticket holders. When single-game tickets finally went on sale in October, we looked at the university website the day they were released. However, most of the available tickets were only singles. Even when we found two seats together, the tickets were all the way at the top of the stadium. Annie and I sat up there once before and wanted better seats this time around.

So we started watching ticket sites like Stubhub, Vivid Seats and Seatgeek. Stubhub had the best inventory of available tickets by a long shot. We watched the site for a few weeks but it wasn’t until about 10 days before the game that we started seeing some good options appear. At first there were either few tickets available or the tickets that were for sale were ridiculously priced.

Finally we found two seats in section 4, row 10. The seats were being sold on Stubhub for $115 each plus taxes and fees. Altogether it came to $274.10. But I only paid $240.36 and I’ll receive $11.50 in cashback at a later date. So how did I save a total of $45.24 off the ticket price? It’s as simple as 1-2-3.

Step-by-Step

1) Raise.com

First I went to Raise.com to buy discounted Stubhub gift cards. Raise is an online gift card marketplace where you can sell gift cards for cash or buy discounted gift cards to all your favorite brands. Raise was selling gift cards at 6% off the listed amount. So I bought three gift cards worth $180 for only $169.26.

2) CashBackMonitor

Next I went to CashBackMonitor to see what shopping portals were giving the best deals at Stubhub. CashBackMonitor keeps tabs on 45 different shopping portals including cash back portals, travel miles and points portals and credit card points portals. After selecting the website where you want to shop, it tells you what percentage in cash back, points or miles each portal is offering.

I found the best deal for me at TopCashback.com, which offered up to 8% cash back on purchases made at Stubhub. TopCashback, like Rakuten, is free to join and pays you cash back for shopping at your favorite online retailers.

3) Stubhub

My final stop was to go to Stubhub (clicking through via TopCashback so my order was tracked) to order the tickets.

After selecting the tickets I wanted, it was time to check out. As luck would have it, I had a 10% off coupon sitting in my Stubhub account which knocked $23 off the total. Then I applied the $180 worth of gift cards and paid the remaining balance from my PayPal account. I used PayPal because it’s one of the Chase Freedom Q4 bonus categories. So I earned 5x Chase Ultimate Rewards points on that portion of my purchase.

While this might seem like a lot of steps, it only takes a few minutes. For this time spent, I saved $10.74 buying gift cards on Raise.com. I also saved $23 with the 10% off coupon and I’ll receive $11.50 in cash back from TopCashback.com. I don’t know about you but saving $45.24 was worth a few extra steps!

Of course, using Raise.com and CashBackMonitor can apply to lots of other online purchases and not just Stubhub. Next time you’re buying something online, spend a few minutes checking out these websites and see how much money you can save.

The Game

My Fighting Illini warming up before game time.

First off, we loved our seats. We were sitting 10 rows up from the court and had great views of the action at each basket. Watching games on TV don’t do justice to the size and speed of these athletes.

The atmosphere in the stadium was electric, as if it were a March Madness game. Illinois came out hot, hitting their first three 3-point attempts. Arizona settled in and for most of the first half, the game was back and forth. At halftime, Arizona led 39-38.

By midway in the second half, Arizona started pulling away (Courtesy ESPN).

The second half was a different story, however. For the first eight minutes of the second half, Arizona extended leads only for Illinois to claw back into the game. With twelve minutes left, Illinois had reduced the deficit to one, trailing 53-52. From that point on, though, Arizona took control and showed why they’re ranked in the Top 25. Two of their heralded freshman took over with Nico Mannion and Josh Green hitting shots from all over the court. By the game’s end, Arizona had 90 while Illinois had 69.

While it would’ve been fun to see a close game decided in the final minute, the environment at McKale was superb and I’m glad we were there. We’re already looking forward to December 2020, when these two teams meet again in Champaign, Illinois!

Bottom Line

It’s fun to splurge to see your favorite teams play away from home. While this can inevitably get expensive, if you know a few simple tips and tricks, you can save a little money. Instead of just purchasing tickets outright, I used sites like Raise.com, CashBackMonitor and TopCashback.com to save a little bit of money. Even though I only saved $45, I’d rather have that money that not. In fact, that $45 bought us appetizers and drinks while pregaming at Gentle Ben’s Brewing Company.