Will Plenk got called to do a gig on Monday and had to go find a map.

The director of athletic bands for the University of Memphis was pretty sure Colgate University was located in New York. He just had no clue where, and that was now a fairly important fact to know.

Because Colgate had a problem.

Its men’s basketball team is playing Baylor on Friday at FedExForum in the NCAA tournament. Its women’s ice hockey team is also playing against Wisconsin in the NCAA Frozen Four in New Hampshire on Friday. And this private liberal arts school of about 3,100 students in Hamilton, New York, could send its pep band to only one event.

Colgate chose hockey, since that game was closer to campus, and went looking for a solution. It found 29 Memphis students and a band director willing to help. So Tiger basketball might have missed out on March Madness, but its band won’t – with a twist, of course.

“Our email to the students, typically I end the email with ‘Go Tigers,’ or something,” Plenk said. “This one was ‘Go Raiders?’ ”

The NCAA tournament officially returns to Memphis this week, with FedExForum serving as a host site for March Madness for the first time since 2017. It’s not exactly as Tiger fans hoped, with coach Penny Hardaway’s team playing simultaneously elsewhere around the country (teams aren’t permitted to play at their home arenas). And this isn’t quite the sexy set-up we had seven years ago for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight – when John Calipari returned to Memphis for the first time with Kentucky, Lonzo Ball drew droves of reporters at UCLA, and North Carolina gave us a trio of bluebloods that was the envy of every other region in the bracket.

But wherever this magical tournament goes, the potential buzzer beaters and breakout stars and Cinderella stories follow.

But Houston is here as a top seed a year after its AAC rivalry with Memphis came to a close and so is Nebraska’s Keisei Tominaga, a player with a readymade nickname for March – – "Japanese Steph Curry."

New Mexico is a trendy upset pick, and it has the endearing connection between coach Richard Pitino and star Jamal Mashburn Jr. Pitino’s father, Rick, coached Jamal Mashburn Sr. at Kentucky. Two teams that lost to Memphis are returning here (Clemson and Texas A&M) and two one-and-done NBA prospects are playing for Baylor (Ja’Kobe Walter and Yves Missi).

But it’s not just FedExForum playing host during events like this. It’s the whole city. Sometimes that means putting together a makeshift version of "The Mighty Sound of the South" and learning an unfamiliar fight song on the fly.

It’s unlikely Baylor knows much about the band situation at Colgate, which won the Patriot League and made the NCAA tournament for a fifth consecutive year. But this has happened before, according to Colgate athletic director Yariv Amir. Whether it’s because of overlapping engagements or a lack of band members due to spring break, the school has had to find additional band members or find a high school band.

“It’s just something schools like us do sometimes,” Amir said. “To have a band, our band, ready to go to add some more energy … it’s a really important part of this.”

Plenk was initially contacted because Colgate was looking to connect with high school bands in the area to help out. But Baylor and Colgate are scheduled for an 11:40 a.m. tip Friday, when high school students are still in class. So Plenk offered to step in with a version of the Memphis pep band.

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He quickly had the 29 members allowed by the NCAA, and the rest has mostly been logistics. Memphis had to learn the Colgate fight song, "FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT." Plenk then sent Colgate a list of songs the Tigers usually play during games, along with recordings. There was one song that overlapped between Memphis and Colgate – "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones.

But to Plenk, there is more than music being exchanged. Since Memphis can’t be in the NCAA tournament, this is as close as these students can get to the excitement of March Madness.

“There are just certain things that are elevated experiences in terms of what the band typically does and that’s something that is important for our students to see,” Plenk said. “It just feels different walking into an NCAA tournament game.”

His pep band will look different, too. Colgate has provided shirts and other team gear for the game, so his group will be wearing red instead of blue. They were identified as the Colgate Raider pep band in the official NCAA team sheet Plenk had to submit.

And if Colgate were to pull off an upset Friday, if that's how Cinderella happens to emerge at FedExForum, Memphis will have played a small role in it.

“I’m not sure that the band members even now know where Colgate is,” Plenk said, laughing. “But they know the fight song, and they know that they’re representing them.”

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on X: @mgiannotto

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: How Memphis saved Colgate from March Madness, Frozen Four band problem