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Michigan Wolverines women’s basketball team has travel woes getting out of Los Angeles after bowing out of NCAA Tournament

ANN ARBOR (AP) — The Michigan women’s basketball team had a hard time getting home after its overtime loss to Kansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

The team played in Los Angeles on Saturday and was supposed to take a charter flight back to Michigan that evening along with the school’s band and cheerleaders. That didn’t go according to plan.

The Wolverines got to the airport and sat outside for nearly 3 hours waiting for a second pilot.

“Due to nationwide weather delays on Saturday and nationwide crew shortages, the charter airline had to ferry in the captain from Texas to crew Michigan’s flight home,” NCAA spokeswoman Meghan Durham Wright told The Associated Press.

Michigan’s travel party finally started going through security screening to get on the plane at 8:30 p.m. PDT and then boarded an hour later. After sitting on the plane for 75 minutes, the team found out the pilot was over his allotted flight time for the day, so the plane couldn’t take off.

To make matters worse, the buses that had dropped the team off at the airport had left, which goes against NCAA rules. That forced the team to take ride-share cars back to its hotel.

Staff members waited 45 minutes for the buses return to transport the team’s luggage.

The Wolverines returned to the airport Sunday morning and, after about an hour delay, finally were on their way home. They arrived back in Michigan at 7 p.m. EDT.

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