60 Hours of Tournament Countdown Coverage Surrounding NCAA Bball Championships on ESPNU

60 Hours of Tournament Countdown Coverage Surrounding NCAA Basketball Championships on ESPNU

Your homecourt for college hoops, ESPNU will televise more than 60 hours of comprehensive Tournament Countdown studio programming beginning Selection Sunday, March 11 at 8 p.m. and extending past the last dribble of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships on Tuesday, April 3.

On March 11, ESPN platforms will offer more than 13 hours of Selection Sunday programming (full details).

2012 ESPNU Tournament Countdown programming highlights:

• Tournament Countdown: College Basketball Live Special – Seasoned basketball reporter Andy Katz will once again preview the upcoming madness by interviewing all 68 men’s coaches in a five-hour special to tip off the basketball post-season.
• Tournament Countdown: The Experts – After selections are made on Sunday, ESPNU’s panel of experts will breakdown each first and second round game, providing viewers insight into filling out their own brackets. They will also educate fans on the sleepers and the names you need to know. On Monday The Experts will walk through each round of the tournament and explain who viewers should expect to be cutting down the nets in New Orleans.
• Tournament Countdown: Road to the Championship – A look back in separate 30-minute specials at the journey each final four team took to reach the top tier of the national bracket with features and analysis.
• Tournament Countdown: ESPNU College Basketball WhipAround – ESPNU host Dari Nowkhah takes viewers around the country and into the press room to preview and review every second round game of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
• SportsCenterU – Gets extra playing time at the end of the night to breakdown all of the college basketball action around the county during ESPNU Tournament Countdown coverage.
• Crunch Time: Champ Week Edition – Captures every crucial moment from ESPN’s 137 Championship Week games.
• Tournament Countdown: ESPNU Film Room – ESPNU’s roster of former coaches single out the X’s & O’s viewers need to understand when their team takes to the court in the final four matchups.
• 2012 NIT Selection Show – In advance of the network’s coverage the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), the nation’s oldest post-season college basketball tournament, Nowkhah and analyst Dino Gaudio will announce the 32-team field live on ESPNU.
• Tournament Countdown will once again include extensive NCAA women’s basketball coverage from the court and in the studio. Full details to be released later this week. (ESPNU studio elements included in the schedule below).

ESPNU
The 24-hour college sports television network airs more than 650 live events annually and offers over 600 original studio shows. ESPNU has seen a steady increase since its inception on March 4, 2005 and is now in over 73 million households. The brand is also available in high definition on ESPNUHD, now in over 20 million homes. The network has long-term carriage agreements with all 10 of the top multichannel TV providers – Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV (Channel 208), DISH Network (Channel 141), Mediacom, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS TV and AT&T U-verse.