This is exactly my thought, too. For an event like the Final Four you want to leave as much room for error as possible. Plus, it was well known in advance by last Friday that the weather was going to be horrible today. The flight should have been by Tuesday at the latest before this extreme windy weather. Even without the extreme windy weather, Tuesday would be enough time to deal with travel disruptions and irritations such as this.I'm still not understanding why the initial flight was scheduled for 6 pm. That still wouldn't have gotten them into Phoenix airport until around midnight ET - and probably not into their hotel room until around 1 a.m. ET. I know they're young and that probably isn't an issue for them. But still seems to me you'd want to arrive earlier than that.
Plus an earlier scheduled departure time allows room to resolve potential travel issues like this -- if they were scheduled to leave at noon, the five hour delay is much more manageable. Scheduling travel for that late in the day is always risky.