INDIANAPOLIS — Long before the Wildcats had secured a spot in the Final Four, Matthew Vargas told his two older siblings to book their flights to Indy.
"Come to the Final Four. Literally, that's all you have to do and I got you," Vargas told them, but big brother Mark and sister Stephanie Pereire aren't built like that.
They work in the mortgage industry; they map things out, make sure they have their i's dotted, t's crossed.
"We're planners," Pereire said Saturday afternoon. Booking a flight to Indy without knowing if the Arizona men's basketball team they grew up with, cheered on and cried over was going to be in the Final Four for the first time this century?
But Matthew was insistent. With every win, Pereire and Mark Vargas would question their brother, an assistant basketball coach at Dakota State University. Do you think they're going to make it?
"As this thing built, I said come to the Final Four. That's all you have to do," Matthew said.
As a basketball coach, he has connections. He knows a guy, he told his sibs, and it turns out he wasn't wrong.
A fellow coach helped him get two tickets, and Matthew bought two more.
"I knew I had to make their thing happen," he said as the siblings toasted the Wildcats Saturday afternoon from a packed sports bar blocks away from Lucas Oil Stadium.
It's been about three years since the Vargas siblings — from left, Stephanie Pereire, Mark Vargas and Matthew Vargas — were together. Baby brother Matthew reunited them at the Final Four in Indianapolis.
After hesitating, Mark, who still lives in their native Tucson, and Pereire, who lives in California, booked their flights a month ago and crossed their fingers.
"I told Mark, we're gonna manifest this, we're just going to totally focus on the fact that we're going to keep winning, keep winning and we're just going to go for it," she recalled. "You only live once. We're getting older and this memory will outlive the experience, will outlive anything we're having to dish out to be here."
Pereire stole that bit of wisdom from her little brother.
"When I'm trying to make a decision about something, he'll say, 'What's the better story?' I kind of use that all the time," she said.
"I always knew it was gonna happen," Matthew said. "I think they only really believed it after they bought their plane tickets."
The Vargas siblings' Final Four fling was the first time they've been together in three years.
A Tucson dad's promise, 17 years in the making
Keith Wilburn took his young sons to the Sweet 16 at Lucas Oil Stadium in 2009.
"That was exciting. We had an awesome time and I had promised my boys that we someday would go to a Final Four," Wilburn recalled.
It took him 17 years to make good on his promise.
On Saturday, Wilburn and his youngest son, Sam, were back at Lucas Oil Stadium; his oldest son, Nick, couldn't make the trip.
As an Arizona men's basketball season ticketholder for the past 38 years, Wilburn, who retired from the University of Arizona a couple of years ago, was able to get Final Four tickets.
"We're excited to be here," said Wilburn, who flew out of Tucson on Thursday morning.
Sam Wilburn drove from Tucson to St. Louis, where he met up with his father. The pair then made the four-hour drive Friday morning to Indy, where Keith Wilburn's sister lives.
Wilburn spent Saturday afternoon with his sister and young nieces at the Final Four Fan Fest at the Indiana Convention Center next to the stadium.
Fan Fest is geared largely for young kids, who earn tickets at various basketball-centric games, including several that involve shooting baskets.
But Wilburn's mind was wandering to Saturday evening, when the Wildcats met the Michigan Wolverines.
"Arizona is the real thing," he mused. "Tucson's a drinking town with a basketball problem, and it's not going to be a problem today. I'm not sure who we will play on Monday, but we'll be there."
