In part, Saul Phillips friendship with Andy Katz may have helped North Dakota State acquire some more national television expsoure.
Phillips NDSU men’s basketball team – along with NDSU’s women’s team – will host their annual season-opening "Late Show" event Oct. 16 in front of a national television audience on ESPNU. NDSU is one of nine NCAA Division I programs scheduled to appear on ESPNU’s four-hour long Midnight Madness coverage.
Andy Katz will be one of the studio hosts for the show. It was a few years ago when Katz, who covered University of Wisconsin basketball, was sitting Phillips’ office watching a Boston Red Sox playoff game. Phillips was an assistant at Wisconsin at the time.
"Andy called me about two weeks ago asking me what we are doing for Midnight Madness," Phillips said. "He thought maybe they should send a crew out to get a different angle from a smaller school. He texts me back a week later ‘looks like we are heading out there.’"
The other schools featured on the show that begins at 8 p.m. will be heavyweights Connecticut, Duke, Georgetown, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, North Carolina and Washington.
"The neat thing about it is we will place on a platform with some of the most prominent programs in the country," Phillips said. "It’s huge from a recruiting standpoint. It’s huge for our school."
Of course, it was just last March when NDSU got plenty of national exposure advancing to its first NCAA Tournament. They were on CBS when the lost to Kansas in the opening round. Prior to that, a national audience watching CBS’s NCAA Tournament Selection Show watched a lot of Bison Sports Arena fans celebrate the announcement that their Bison would be playing Kansas in the Minneapolis Metrodome.
"We made quite an impression last year, not just with the team’s play, but with the support we had," said Phillips, who said NDSU’s Oct. 16 "Late Show" will be souped up a little bit with ESPN being there. "It’s going to be a spectacle."
This is huge!…cant wait!!!
Its nice PR for sure. However in my eyes ESPNU is a notch above PBS.
I will take air time on PBS any day of the week. Better then NO love.
Who cares if its ESPNU?? If you do a little bit more research(before commenting), it’s being simulcast on ESPN2. The main draw is the other teams that are going to be showcased with NDSU, not the freakin channel…there WILL be viewers just to see UNC, UCONN, etc regardless of what channel it’s on..
The Great US of A is #1 NFL, #2 FBS Football, #3 College Basketball (including and made better by Cinderella), #4………….Where is Hockey on the list? We ARE a Basketball School. It is the easiest sport to make a quick splash in and it generates the most money and noteriety per capita on the court. GOOOOOOOO BISON!
Will you be watching all of UND’s home hockey games on national cable, too? Even 12 basketball games will be telecast, as well as two more football games live from the Alerus!
MY GOD, WILL YOU IDIOTS UP NORTH STOP POSTING ON OUR SITES!
JEALOUS MORONS!
NDSU STUDENTS NEED TO STEP IT UP SATURDAY AND NEXT FRIDAY!
So pumped for this, huge news. I hope the NDSU crowd shows up HUGE for this next week.
Gonna be great
Bad part is this might be the highlight of the season for both men’s and women’s teams. Not a bunch of wins this year between the two. Still will be fun!
Wow, NDSU on ESPNU & ESPN2 with the big boys. Great news for NDSU, Fargo and North Dakota. This just shows the amount of national exposure that NDSU did receive last year in March Madness!!