HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — The first NCAA Tournament run for Marshall University’s men’s basketball team in more than 30 years has come to an end, but University officials have hopes the effects of the national showcase for the Herd will be felt for years.
“Anything that puts Marshall out there and sort of puts us in the minds of prospective students and their families is a good thing for us,” said Dr. Tammy Johnson, executive director of admissions for Marshall University.
The Herd, the 2018 Conference USA champions, upset Wichita State, a No. 4 seed, back on Friday in San Diego, Ca. with an 81-75 win, the program’s first NCAA Tournament win.
On Sunday, Marshall fell to West Virginia University, 94-71.
In between those games, millions of people heard about Marshall University.
“We monitor here things like our advertising value equivalency of the coverage we get when something like this happens and we can just sit and watch it skyrocket,” said Ginny Painter, senior vice president for communications and marketing at Marshall University.
She estimated the advertising value equivalency, or “earned media,” due to Marshall athletics in the month of March totaled $75 million.
Saturday alone, Painter said, that number was at $15.9 million, compared with less than $300,000 on a typical day.
“That’s just beyond anything that we could do without the basketball tournament,” Painter told MetroNews on Monday.
Such attention won’t necessarily translate to increased applications, Johnson noted.
“While certainly it helps us to have our name out there and to just have more name recognition with prospective students and families, nobody makes a decision to attend a college or to apply to a college based on just a few seconds of advertising or TV coverage,” she said.
“But what it does do, you hope, is that it encourages those students and families to, maybe, go online, learn a little bit more about Marshall, to start to consider Marshall in their research and in their options for school.”
This week is Spring Break at Marshall University.
Members of the Herd basketball team along with coaches and staff members were scheduled to arrive back in Huntington to a community welcome by Monday evening.
“It was an incredible run,” Painter said. “I think it’s been great for morale and ‘Go Herd!'”