Waiting in line for men’s basketball tickets with the possibility of not actually getting one is now a thing of the past for Kentucky students. With the introduction of UK’s news hybrid online/in-person lottery system for the 2010-11 basketball season, the UK Ticket Office has created a more student-friendly, convenient way to get tickets.Following record turnouts last year at student lotteries, where students traditionally attended a lottery at Memorial Coliseum, received a group number and hoped to have their number called, students will now enroll for the lottery online.Joe Sharpe, associate athletics director for ticket operations, cited a convenience factor among the main reasons for the change. An overcapacity Memorial Coliseum, a recent student survey that favored the use of an online lottery and success of online lotteries at other benchmark schools were also factors in the change.”Students wanted a chance to be in the lottery but not have to sit in Memorial Coliseum for three or four hours on a Monday night,” Sharpe said. “This gives them the convenience and opportunity to sit in their dorm room and register for the lottery and get a ticket.”Full-time UK students for the semester in which the distribution occurs (12-plus hours for undergraduates, nine-plus hours for graduate students) and have paid their athletics fees, as well as eligible BCTC students, will receive an e-mail reminder from the ticket office on the Monday of the online registration week, the first of which begins Nov. 8. The e-mail will include the student’s account ID and password to access the online ticketing system (BCTC students must contact the ticket office in advance to set up the account). After receiving their respective passwords, students will need to visit www.ukathletics.com/tickets by Wednesday at 5 p.m. to register (step-by-step process of the entire online ticket registration process can be found at the UK Ticket office website).On Wednesday evening after the online registration deadline, the UK Ticket Office will conduct a random draw to select the winners of the online registration process. Each student who enters will have an equal chance of being selected in the draw. Winning students will be notified via e-mail from the UK Ticket Office on Thursday morning. Only the winning students will be eligible to attend the Monday night lottery at Memorial Coliseum, meaning all winning students who attend the Monday night lottery will be guaranteed a ticket to each game at the lottery, a change from previous years when students could sit in line for hours without receiving a ticket. Winning selections are non-transferable, meaning students will not be able to “transfer” their spot in the lottery to another student. On the night of the lottery, only the IDs of the students selected will scan correctly.On the Monday evening of lottery week, doors at Memorial Coliseum will open at 8 p.m. and the lottery will begin at 9 p.m. Students must have their ID with them. Those that wish to sit together at games may purchase tickets together, but they must go to the same ticket window on the lottery night and seating groups will be limited to 10 students.The amount of tickets available for the lottery will vary depending on the game – allotment is usually between 3,500 to 4,000 tickets for each game, according to associate ticket manager Cathy Hurst – but each student will have the opportunity to buy one ticket to every designated game in the lottery. Theoretically, if every winning student shows up to the lottery, there should be no more student tickets available at the end of the lottery.However, in the case that not every student shows up, there will be an opportunity for remaining students to purchase unclaimed tickets the following Tuesday morning. Any student tickets that are unclaimed from the Monday night lottery will go on sale Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the Joe Craft Center ticket office. Tickets, at this point, will be sold on a first-come, first-serve basis, and students may bring a maximum of two student IDs to purchase tickets.If there are still tickets unclaimed after Tuesday, they will be sold as guest tickets on Wednesday at 9 a.m. at the Joe Craft Center ticket office before being made available to the general public through Ticketmaster on Wednesday evening.Student Government President Ryan Smith, who helped push the change in the distribution process, said there is a possibility that seniority (credit hours) could factor into the random draw for postseason tickets in the future.”We’d like to make it as convenient for students as possible and reward the best fans,” Smith said.But for now, the online lottery will remain a random draw.For a complete step-by-step process of the new student lottery ticket distribution, please visit the UK Ticket Office website.The first student lottery is scheduled for Nov. 15, followed by lotteries on Dec. 6, Jan. 24 and Feb. 14. The online registration window for each lottery will take place the week prior to the respective lottery.Lottery 1: Boston (Nov. 30), Indiana (Dec. 11), Mississippi Valley State (Dec. 18), Winthrop (Dec. 22)Lottery 2: Coppin State (Dec. 28), Penn (Jan. 3), Auburn (Jan. 11), LSU (Jan. 15)Lottery 3: Georgia (Jan. 29), Tennessee (Feb. 8), Mississippi State (Feb. 15)Lottery 4: South Carolina (Feb. 19), Florida (Feb. 26), Vanderbilt (March 1)