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

Updated at 9 p.m. ET: Severe thunderstorms continued to threaten Wednesday night along a multi-state line stretching from the Southeast to as far north as the nation's capital, according to The Weather Channel.

The National Weather Service issued tornado watches across large swaths of Georgia, as well as parts of Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, the Carolinas and northwest Florida, through Wednesday night. The Weather Channel warned of thunderstorms with spotty, damaging gusts and low chance of tornado in northeastern Florida and on the east side of the Florida panhandle.   

Thirteen tornadoes were confirmed to have blown through the South on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to The Weather Channel -- they touched down in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and Illinois on Tuesday and Indiana, Tennessee and Georgia on Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, a violent tornado that ripped through Adairsville, Ga., killed at least one person, overturned cars, littered Interstate 75 with debris and forced officials to shut down a 10-mile stretch of the road, officials said.

Read more at weather.com

Numerous buildings in nearby Bartow, Ga., some with people inside, were also damaged in the powerful storm, and police have received multiple calls of injuries and trauma, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

A man was killed in the state when the tornado hit his mobile home, Bartow County officials said.

Eight people went to the hospital with injuries following the storm, officials at Gordon Hospital in Calhoun, Ga., said. The storm also left at least 12,400 without power statewide, utilities providers said.

That twister was only one of a handful that touched down in the South and the Midwest Wednesday, as storms throughout the region caused widespread power outages, structural damages and were blamed for another death in the region.

The National Weather Service also confirmed another twister touched down in Sardis, Miss., heavily damaging homes in Solsberry, Ind.

Earlier, a 47-year-old man in Nashville, Tenn., was killed when a tree fell on a shed he was in, according to local fire department officials.

Meanwhile, in Monticello, Ark., a woman was struck by lightning late Tuesday but only had minor injuries, according to police, and a 32-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were treated for minor injuries in Marion County, Ky., the emergency management division reported.

Packing quarter-size hail and powerful winds, the storms also knocked out power to thousands of people throughout the region early Wednesday.

In Memphis, Tenn., more than 13,000 customers lost power as high winds tore down power lines and at least two tornado warnings were issued in the area, but later expired, according to the National Weather Service.

And more than 7,300 Nashville customers were without power, according to Nashville Electric. Utilities reported another 8,000 outages in Arkansas, 7,000 in Mississippi, and nearly 12,000 in Indiana.

In Arlington, Tenn., downed power lines sparked a fast-spreading grass fire that caused the evacuation of a small mental-health facility, Arlington Fire Department Lt. Chad Wiseman said.

"The wind was pushing everything really fast," Wiseman said, adding that gusts reached 50 mph as the fire was burning. "The wind feeds everything. The wind will turn a little grass fire into something that was shooting 15- or 20-foot flames in the air. It looked pretty scary."

The fire was brought under control within an hour, officials said.

A number of factors have helped build the storm system, according to meteorologists. Unseasonably warm, wet air has been pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico by southerly winds, and that is being met by cold air coming in from the Plains via Canada, The Weather Channel’s Chad Burke said, adding that the cold air is being driven eastward by unusually high winds.

"It's not a normal pattern for this time of year," said Burke. "The warm air has changed the dynamic. On the back end of the storm, you have high temperatures in the 50s and 60s in places like Chicago. By tomorrow night, they'll be at 11 (degrees)."

NBC staff writers Vignesh Ramachandran and Isolde Raftery contributed reporting.

Louisville Metro Corrections / AP

Mahmoud Hindi, suspect in fatal shooting at a homeowners association meeting in Louisville, Ky.

One man was shot dead and a second was critically injured at a Louisville, Ky., homeowners association meeting in a dispute over a driveway and fence, police said Friday.

Mahmoud Hindi, 55, allegedly opened fire Thursday night at the meeting held at the Springdale Community Church, where a Bible study class was also under way, NBC station WAVE of Louisville reported.

Hindi was charged with murder, first-degree assault and seven counts of wanton endangerment, according to Louisville Metro Corrections, where he has been jailed. He will be arraigned on the charges Saturday morning.

Louisville police spokeswoman Alicia Smiley said Hindi was subdued by a retired Louisville police officer who was attending the meeting.

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The fatal shooting victim was identified by chief deputy coronor Jo-Ann Farmer as David Merritt, 73, told the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper. Police did not immediately identify the injured man.

Merritt’s wife, Vivian, told the newspaper she and her husband lived in the Spring Creek neighborhood for 15 years. Her husband was a retired from the federal highway department and had served on the county planning commission, she said.

Records indicate Hindi graduated from medical school at the University of Jordan in 1982, the Courier-Journal reported.

Up to 20 people were in the church at the time of the 7:30 p.m. shooting, WAVE reported.

Neighbors said the shooting was the result of an argument over a concrete driveway that Hindi built on his property, WAVE reported.

The home's owner is listed as Musa Mahmoud Hindi, according to city documents.

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Neighbor Myron Pass told WAVE that Hindi "has been here a couple of years and has done some things to his home that are not in the subdivision policies, and he was asked several times to remove the things that he had done and he refused." 

A city land-use document says that after neighbors complained, officials determined a driveway in front of the home was put in without a permit and that it violated city code as it did not lead to a garage or carport or to the rear of the home. A fence was built too high and without the required setback in violation of city codes, too, the document said. The Spring Creek Homeowner’s Association contacted city staff and provided several records about the history the case, the document says.

This article includes reporting by NBC News' Jim Gold and The Associated Press.

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Homicide detectives investigating a slaying at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby said Monday they have no suspects but stressed the death appeared to have nothing to do with the iconic horse race.

Louisville Police Lt. Barry Wilkerson said Monday investigators are asking witnesses to come forward with information in the slaying of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez.

An autopsy was conducted to determine the cause of death, but Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said the office was withholding information pending the investigation into the death. She said the autopsy did reveal injuries on Perez's body.

Perez's body was found Sunday morning in a barn on the track's backside. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Perez worked at the track as a groom for trainer Cecil Borel, brother of three-time Derby winning jockey Calvin Borel.

Wilkerson says there were several altercations in that area of Churchill Downs on Saturday night, and police are trying to determine if Perez's death is connected. He says he's hoping witnesses come forward who might have information on what happened to Perez.

Perez's body was found in the back portion of Barn No. 8, just a few barns away from where Derby winner I'll Have Another was stabled. 

'Some type of altercation'

On Sunday, Louisville Metro Police spokeswoman Alicia Smiley told NBC News station WAVE 3 that Perez "did sustain injuries that lead us to believe he was involved in some type of altercation." Smiley said.

"[Detectives] were able to determine that there is foul play involved, however we still do not have an exact cause of death and we'll have to await the coroner's report for those details," Smiley said. 

More headlines from wave3.com

Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Perez was identified by his 19-year-old son, who works at the track.

The body was found in a barn occupied by Louisville trainer Angel Montano Sr., Smiley said. Montano did not have a horse in Saturday's derby.

Police interviewed people who live above the barns to try to piece together what happened. About 200 people live at Churchill Downs at any given time — either in dormitories on the edge of the property or in small apartments above some of the barns themselves.

"We don't have anything pointing to the fact that this would have had any association in terms of Churchill Downs or the derby itself," Smiley told WAVE 3.

I'll Have Another, ridden by jockey Mario Gutierrez, won the 138th running of the race at Churchill Downs in a stunning finish before a record crowd of more than 165,000 people.

About a week after last year's Kentucky Derby, jockey Michael Baze's body was found in a vehicle near the track's stables. His death was ruled an accidental overdose.

NBC News station WAVE3, NBC News' Michelle Franzen, msnbc.com staff and The Associated Press contributed to this story.