Wichita State's Sunday, Mar. 5 home men's basketball game against South Florida has been selected for air on ESPNU and will now tip an hour earlier at 1 p.m. CT.
 
The game had originally been earmarked for streaming on ESPN+, however, the American Athletic Conference, ESPN and Wichita State worked together to identify another linear broadcast to make up for the technical difficulties during the Dec. 17 game against Oklahoma State.
 
The Mar. 5 game will mark the first linear broadcast that will be produced completely in-house in Wichita State's upgraded TV production room alongside third-party contractor Black Fox.
 
The broadcast will be created using cameras and equipment inside Charles Koch Arena. Staff will be local, including some students from Wichita State University who will work various positions, such as camera shading, audio mixing and camera operation. ESPN will supplement the local staff with 4-6 people to assist with the broadcast including talent.
 
"We are excited for the opportunity to broadcast the first linear telecast from our production room and to showcase the local talent both students and professionals, who work hard year-round to bring Shocker Athletics to you on ESPN plus," said Senior Associate AD Brad Pittman.
 
The $125,000 upgrade took two existing small TV production rooms and upgraded them to give WSU the capability to broadcast ESPNU linear games. Highlights of the project include:

• Doubled the size of production room 2 to allow for additional workspace for ESPN personnel that would travel here to help produce the game
• Added additional communication equipment
• Added routing capability to use equipment from both production rooms to handle the increased demands for replay and graphics for a linear game
• Created the capability to broadcast ESPN/ESPN2 basketball games and ESPNU baseball/softball/volleyball games down the road with camera equipment upgrades