David J. Phillip / AP

University of Louisville players work during practice Friday, April 5, in Atlanta for their NCAA Final Four college basketball semifinal game against Wichita State.

Your favorite player's number isn't the only one you'll need to know if you want to impress at Final Four viewing parties this weekend. About 100,000 fans are expected to flood into Atlanta from Saturday to Monday to cheer on college basketball's biggest stars. The Louisville Cardinals will face the Wichita State Shockers, and the Michigan Wolverines will come up against the Syracuse Orange.

The NCAA said it has trucked in an additional 18,218 additional seats to add to the 74,000-capacity Georgia Dome, from which face-painted spectators can peer down at the spankin' new $100,000 court.

Sure, you can scrape by reciting stats and recounting stunning moments from championship games past. But any sports fan worth his or her salt knows those. Here are the numbers you need to know what's really going on behind the scenes during the year's most anticipated weekend of college hoops:

2,700 — Feet scalpers are required to stay from the complex that includes the Georgia Dome in order to ply their trade under Peach State law. State regulations require that unofficial ticket-hawkers steer well clear of the Georgia World Congress Center, which includes the stadium.

29 — Inches the championship court is elevated above the stadium floor. The final team standing literally gets to take the field — it's given the option of taking the court home. If the national champion declines, the NCAA sells the court after the tournament.

32,942 — Amount in dollars on StubHub for a single ticket to view the semifinals and the championship from a posh suite. The average price tag for a semifinals seat in 2013 was an all-time high of $1,190, according to secondary-market aggregator TiqIQ.com.

315 — Lowest price in dollars for a single semifinals ticket on TicketLiquidator.com, for a seat way up in the Dome's stratosphere. Or luckless fans can try and strike a deal with those friendly scalpers lingering a few blocks from the stadium.

1,125 — Credentialed members of the pencil-pushing, camera-toting media who will be jostling for laptop real estate over the weekend. One of the most popular annual sporting events in the United States, the Big Dance's finale also draws in a sizable contingent of foreign media.

155,000 — Weight in pounds of the monster video board looming over the court, blowing the athletes to superhuman size. And so fans don't miss a single moment, 660 television monitors also dot walls throughout the stadium.

30 — Length in seconds of a campaign finance ad the Fair Elections for New York Campaign is planning to run during the Syracuse-Michigan matchup Saturday. (Also, approximate length of bathroom break fans will take during said ad.)

1904 — Year the school that would become Wichita State adopted the team nickname "Shockers," for the harvesting, or "shocking," of wheat that went on in fields not far from the school. The men's basketball team, then playing for what was known as Fairmount College, first took the court in 1906.

32,952 — Feet of soft drink supply lines that snake to drink dispensers through the stadium to provide sugary soda pop nectar to throats hoarse from rooting on the team. The 21-year-old Dome is better known for hosting football games, but it has been home to three previous Final Four matchups.

11,088 — Distance in feet that fans have to drive from the Dome to get a chili dog at Hotlanta's nearest Varsity drive-in restaurant. The chain's been dishing up slaw dogs and orange shakes for Atlanta customers since 1928.

1 — Ubiquitous hand gesture (the high-five) that Louisville claims was invented by its 1978-79 men's basketball team. That team, also known as the Doctors of Dunk, featured players Wiley Brown and Derek Smith, who allegedly came up with the celebratory slap. (Other sources claim Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers invented the high-five during the 1977 baseball season.)

3.9 — Dollar amount, in millions, that Louisville coach Rick Pitino pulls down as his base salary. That makes him the biggest earner before performance bonuses of this year's Final Four coaches. It also explains those snazzy white suits.

1 — Television and six-pack of light beer required to enjoy the game in the comfort of one's own home.

Related:

• Final Four coaches react to the Mike Rice video
• Michigan blows out Florida, headed to first Final Four in 20 years
• UConn rolls Kentucky, advances to sixth straight Final Four

The recording of a 911 call made during a home invasion in Georgia reveals a chilling scene in which a husband coaches his wife -- home alone with her twin 9-year-old children -- to shoot a determined intruder.

The intruder used a crowbar to bust into the house last Friday and at first intended to rob the suburban Atlanta home in Loganville but shifted his focus to hunting down Melinda Herman and her son and daughter, Walton County investigators told NBC station WXIA in Atlanta.

The family had fled through three locked doors, into a bathroom and then to an upstairs crawl space, but the intruder busted the doors open to stalk the family, police said.

As the incident transpired, husband Donnie Herman was in Atlanta and had his wife on one phone line and the 911 operator on the other, according to the recording, obtained by WXIA and the Atlanta Journal- Constitution.

“Do you hear him? Is he in the house? He’s in the house,” Donnie Herman says.

“Melinda, if he opens that door, you shoot him, you understand.”

“She has a weapon?” asks the dispatcher. “What type of weapon?”

“She has a .38,” Donnie Herman said.

The 911 operator tells him that officers were on the way.

“She shot him. She’s shooting him, she’s shooting him.”

"OK," the dispatcher responds.

"Shoot him again! Shoot him!" Donnie Herman yells, later telling the dispatcher “She shot him, a lot.”

Herman tells the dispatcher he heard a lot of screaming. But it was seven agonizing minutes before he found out that his family was OK, WXIA reported.

Melinda Herman told police that she started shooting when the man opened the door to the crawl space. He pleaded with her to stop, but she kept firing until she was out of bullets, she told police. She then fled to a neighbor's house with her children. 

The family is still shaken by what happened.

"Just like I told her that night,” Walton County Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Hall told WXIA. “Ya know, there's right and there's wrong and then there's not natural, and it's not natural for people to have to shoot people, so it is going to bother you ..."

The National Rifle Association tweeted a link about the shooting, apparently using it as an example of responsible gun ownership.

And Sheriff Joe Chapman  told The Associated Press that he was proud of the way she handled the incident.

"This lady decided that she wasn't going to be a victim, and I think everyone else looks at this and hopes they have the courage to do what she done," Chapman said Wednesday.

The alleged intruder, identified as Paul Slater, 32, of Atlanta,  was shot five times. He remained at a hospital. 

Spokesmen for the Sheriff’s Office and the Walton County prosecutors were not immediately available to NBC News.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Updated at 10:17 p.m. ET: Forty-three students and six staffers at an Atlanta elementary school were rushed to the hospital early Monday after exposure to carbon monoxide fumes, fire officials told NBC News.

The students and staffers from Finch Elementary in southwest Atlanta exhibited mild and moderate symptoms related to carbon monoxide poisoning. Four more adults arrived at Grady Hospital by school bus, hospital spokeswoman Denise Simpson said.

The school was evacuated as a precaution, NBC affiliate WXIA reported.

The incident was first reported at about 8:35 a.m. ET, according to WXIA. No one was found unconscious at the scene, but the carbon monoxide reading was 1,700 parts per million, which an Atlanta Fire Rescue Department official said was high.

"Once we got inside, we started finding carbon monoxide readings way, way higher than we've ever experienced before, especially around the heating units and hallways, and the entire building turned out to be saturated," Atlanta fire Battalion Chief Todd Edwards told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Edwards also told the Journal-Constitution the school apparently doesn't have carbon monoxide detectors. However, state law does not require schools to have CO detectors, a spokesman for Georgia’s Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner told the newspaper.

Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless gas that can cause sudden illness and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most common symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, chest pain and confusion.

Erik S. Lesser / EPA

Students are evacuated from Finch Elementary School by members of the Atlanta Fire Department in Atlanta, Dec. 3, 2012. Almost 50 people were reportedly taken to the hospital for treatment following a carbon monoxide leak.

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David Tulis / AP

Law enforcement personnel embrace early Sunday as others investigate the scene of an Atlanta Police Department helicopter crash that killed two officers aboard.

Updated at 5:09 p.m. ET: Federal aviation officials on Sunday were investigating what caused a police helicopter to crash on a street in northwest Atlanta, killing the two officers aboard.

The officers were using the helicopter to search for a missing 9-year-old boy on Saturday night. Witnesses said the helicopter was flying low and clipped power lines as it crashed to the ground near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. and Hamilton E. Holmes drives, WXIA-TV reported. 

The boy was found safe shortly after the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash. No one on the ground was hurt.

The officers were identified Sunday as Richard J. Halford, 48, and Shawn A. Smiley, 40.

Records with the Federal Aviation Administration showed the helicopter was a Hughes OH-6A manufactured in 1967, according to The Associated Press. The Hughes has historically been a military workhorse.

A witness, Ravien Walker, told Channel 2 Action News: “I noticed something falling out of the sky. It hit the power line and it hit the ground. I jumped out of my car and ran because I was really close to it. It could have fell right down on top of my car.”

Another witness, Darryl James, told The Associated Press, “For that time of night, there was nobody on the street for some odd reason. The helicopter hit in the middle of the street with no traffic.”

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An Atlanta police helicopter crashed late Saturday, killing two officers, police said.

Police Chief George Turner confirmed the deaths at a news conference, NBC station WXIA of Atlanta reported. There were no injuries on the ground. The victims' names were not released.

"One of our helicopters went down and two officers were killed," police spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters. 

WXIA reported that witnesses said the helicopter hit power lines before crashing about 10:30 p.m. in northwest Atlanta. The helicopter was searching for a missing 9-year-old boy, police said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the aircraft crashed near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. and Hamilton E. Holmes drives. Power was out in the area.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating, WXIA said.

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For more than a decade, Emory University intentionally misreported data about students to groups that rank colleges nationwide, the president of the private liberal arts college in Atlanta said Friday.

“As an institution that challenges itself, in the words of our vision statement, to be ‘ethically engaged,’ Emory has not been well served by representatives of the university in this history of misreporting. I am deeply disappointed,” said Emory President James W. Wagner in a statement on the university’s website.

Wagner said Emory officials launched an investigation in May after John Latting, the new assistance vice provost for undergraduate enrollment and dean of admissions, discovered discrepancies in data.

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Wagner said SAT/ACT scores were overstated, as well as the class rankings. “Specifically, he discovered that reported SAT/ ACT scores were those for admitted undergraduate students, not the requested scores for enrolled students, which were somewhat lower. A similar misrepresentation was discovered in data for our entering students’ high school class rank,” according to a statement released by Emory.

The investigation also found that two former deans of admission and the leadership of the Office of Institutional Research were aware of the misreporting. They are no longer employed at Emory, according to Emory officials.

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Emory is routinely listed as one of the nation's top colleges by national publications, such as U.S. News & World Report, Forbes and Peterson’s, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Families and students across the nation often rely on rankings when deciding where to apply for college. University officials say they do not know if the wrong data affected Emory’s rankings.

In 2011, U.S. News ranked Emory No. 20 among national public and private universities across the nation.

The university has about 13,300 students across Emory's nine divisions, including its graduate and professional schools, according to the university's website.

Other universities have run into trouble recently over false or misleading data. Some of the cases:

• In July, The University of Illinois College of Law was fined $250,000 by the American Bar Association for intentionally publishing false data about student academic standings, The Chicago Tribune reported.
• In January, Claremont McKenna College in California admitted sending false SAT scores to U.S. News & World Report and other publications, the New York Times reported.
• In November, Iona College in New York said it had misrepresented data over a decade, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

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A jury in Gwinnett County, Ga., has awarded $3 million to the widow of an Atlanta police officer who died while having three-way sex, finding that his doctor was negligent in not properly diagnosing and treating his heart condition.

The decision came in a medical malpractice case filed by Sugeidy Martinez, the widow of police officer William Martinez, against Dr. Sreenivasulu Gangasani of Lawrenceville, Ga., and the Cardiovascular Group, where Gangasani is a board-certified cardiologist, according to WXIA-TV.

According to court documents cited by the television station, William Martinez and a friend were having three-way sex with a woman who was not his wife at a hotel near Atlanta’s airport on March 12, 2009. Around 3 a.m., he fell off the bed and became unresponsive. EMTs couldn’t revive him and he was pronounced dead less than an hour later at a hospital.

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The cause of death was determined to be atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, or hardening of the artery.

“The type of sex that he was engaged in is the type that’s totally unacceptable in our community,” said Rod Edmond, attorney for the Martinez family, WXIA reported. “But the fact of the matter is this man could have died running on the treadmill, running after a criminal.”

Martinez’s widow claimed Gangasani did not properly diagnose Martinez’s high blood pressure, chest pains, shortness of breath and irregular heartbeat, and that he did not order Martinez to avoid strenuous physical activity until more tests could be done.

On May 29, a Gwinnett County jury agreed, finding Gangasani negligent. But jurors also concluded that William Martinez was 40 percent responsible for his own death, and reduced the award to his widow from $5 million to $3 million, according to WXIA.

Gangasani’s attorney, Page Powell, told WXIA the verdict would be appealed. Powell said the Gangasani “did everything he could” to prevent Martinez’s death but Martinez had a history of not following his doctor’s orders, which included refraining from strenuous activity.

Martinez left behind his wife and two sons, ages 7 and 9.

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Police in Atlanta are searching for a suspect they say is behind two separate kidnap attempts of women, including one being dragged off a front porch and stuffed into the trunk of a car, according to local media reports.

Investigators fear he may try again.

Police spent Thursday evening canvassing an East Atlanta neighborhood bordering Edgewood and Reynoldstown, conducting door-to-door searches and handing out a sketch of the suspect, according to WXIA-TV.com, the NBC News affiliate in Atlanta.

"We have a huge sense of urgency," WXIA quoted Atlanta Police Maj. Keith Meadows as saying. "We understand this type of behavior is progressive and we really need to catch this individual before he gets more violent towards his victims."

WXIA-TV's complete coverage of the investigation

Attempts by msnbc.com to contact Meadows or officers with the Atlanta Police Department were unsuccessful Friday afternoon.

According to WXIA, a woman said she was sitting with her friend outside on the front porch early Wednesday when a man ran up with a gun in his hand and grabbed the woman. The woman said the suspect screamed "You f----- with the wrong person!" and dragged her to his car, WXIA reported.

The woman told police she was thrown into the truck of the suspect’s car. She said she desperately tried to get out of the vehicle and was able to rip through a liner and release the trunk latch, according to WXIA. She suffered minor injuries.

Just minutes later and about a mile away, another woman was walking to her car when a suspect pulled up from behind, grabbed her hair, punched her, and started yelling "Get in the trunk," WXIA reported. The suspect was able to get her into the truck, but she kept kicking and trying to use her legs to block the trunk from closing, according to the television station.

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A neighbor heard the woman’s cries and was able to scare off the suspect, according to police. An off-duty detective, who was in area at the time, gave chase but lost sight of the suspect’s car, according to WXIA.

In both attacks, the man was reportedly wearing a black mask, a white T-shirt, and navy blue hoodie, according to police.

The suspect's mask came off during the second attack and witnesses were able to help police develop a sketch of the suspect. Police describe the suspect about 5 feet 6 inches tall and 130 pounds, according to WXIA.

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