Power outage during NCAA game draws national attention to Wichita

Things went so well at Intrust Bank Arena through the first three NCAA games Thursday that something was bound to go wrong.

That moment came during the late-night Michigan-Montana game, where a brief power outage at the arena caused a roughly 10-minute stoppage of play.

The clock issue happened around the 16-minute mark of the second half. At that time, a fuse reportedly blew and the shot clock operating system began malfunctioning.

The power did not go out in the entire arena — just briefly at the scorer's table.

While the issue was being addressed, broadcasters joked about running to Costco to pick up batteries. Then they wondered if Wichita had a Costco.

Then the cameras cut to a man — presumably an arena staffer — who pulled out a tangle of wires from the scorer's table.

Play was stopped for 10 minutes.

Shortly after play resumed, a media timeout was taken, drawing fan ire.

Twitter did not react well to the delay:

Perhaps most painful:

Michigan ended up winning the game 61-47.

In better news for the arena, second-session attendance was reported at 14,019 — just short of the first session's reported attendance of 14,390.

This story was originally published March 16, 2018 at 12:19 AM with the headline "Power outage during NCAA game draws national attention to Wichita."