As the Wittenberg men’s basketball team advanced through the NCAA Division III Tournament, the crowds at the games continually grew larger – both literally and virtually.

Attendance at the games steadily rose from 1,385 in an opening round home win over Lake Erie College to 3,435 in the national championship game loss to Virginia Wesleyan. Likewise, the number of listeners to Wittenberg’s Internet audio broadcasts – now in their eighth year, but only the third with unlimited numbers of listeners – increased as well, from the 149 who tuned in to the opening round win to the 647 who heard the season finale.

That doesn’t take into account the hundreds of local residents who tuned in to WUSO 89.1-FM, the student radio station from which the broadcasts originated. It also doesn’t include the more than 1,000 unique visits to the live online video feeds Wittenberg offered during the sectional semifinals and finals on March 10-11. In addition, the national semifinals were broadcast live on the Internet by d3hoops.com and the national championship game was broadcast live on national cable by College Sports Television (CSTV).

Audio broadcasts are available annually for all football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball games via a partnership with Stretch Internet. Several baseball and softball games have also been broadcast as well. The live video feeds, which were offered for the first time ever by Wittenberg during the sectional tournament, were made possible by a partnership with TRZ Inc.

WUSO Adviser Scott Leo, who has called a variety of Wittenberg sporting events for six years and is also the play-by-play voice for the Columbus Clippers, coordinated the audio broadcasts and worked to acclimate several student workers, including Sean Golden ’06 and Josh Cohick ’07. Golden called the majority of the women’s basketball games in 2005-06 and also called the baseball games this spring, while Cohick joined Leo on men’s basketball broadcasts and also called the softball games. He was joined on softball broadcasts by John Strawn ’07.

— Ryan Maurer