ROCK HILL, SC – The 2008 Food Lion South Atlantic Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournament championship games will air on three cable outlets, reaching the largest audience in conference history, Commissioner Doug Echols announced.

 

This year’s men’s and women’s conference championships will be played on Sunday, March 9 at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, N.C. The men’s and women’s games will be televised on a tape-delay basis on Comcast/Charter Sports South, Time Warner Cable and the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. In addition to being carried on cable outlets along the East Coast from Pennsylvania to Florida, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) is also carried by both of the dominate satellite cable providers – DISH Network and DirecTV, allowing the SAC games to be available via satellite television to viewers across the country. More than 42 million households across the country will have the opportunity to view the two championships.

 

Comcast/Charter Sports South (CSS) reaches 5.8 million households across 12 states. The SAC games will air Tuesday, March 11, with the women’s game on at 7 p.m. and the men’s game on at 9 p.m.

 

MASN serves a 7 state area, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Charlotte, North Carolina and including Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and parts of West Virginia, reaching 5.2 million households. The SAC championships will air Wednesday, March 12 at 9 a.m. for the women’s game and 11 a.m. for the men’s game.

 

DirecTV has more than 16.8 million subscribers, while DISH Network has more than 13.5 million subscribers.

 

Time Warner will air the games in North and South Carolina on Time Warner Cable’s Carolina On Demand (channel 1234) across the two states and currently reaches approximately 800,000 households.  It is a free on demand service so there is no additional charge to watch items, but you must have a digital box to watch the On Demand channel.

 

“This is a major achievement for the South Atlantic Conference,” Echols said. “We will be able to penetrate every major market on the East Coast, as well as a large national audience. This will be a great opportunity to showcase our exceptional basketball teams and our quality academic institutions.”

 

The games will be produced by Mark-It Productions out of Boiling Springs, S.C. Fred Cunningham, a news anchor and former sports anchor with WSPA in Spartanburg, S.C., will handle the play-by-play. Tommy Love, a former women’s head coach at Newberry College, will handle the color commentary.

 

The South Atlantic Conference is one of the premier NCAA Division II conferences in the country and strives for academic success and athletic achievement. Since becoming eligible for NCAA Division II postseason play in 1993, the league has sent representatives from all of its sponsored sports to NCAA postseason play.

 

The South Atlantic Conference currently has nine member institutions: Brevard College, Brevard, N.C.; Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tenn.; Catawba College, Salisbury, N.C.; Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, N.C.; Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN; Mars Hill College, Mars Hill, N.C.; Newberry College, Newberry, S.C.; Tusculum College, Greeneville, Tenn.; and Wingate University, Wingate, N.C.