National Spotlight
The NCAA Division II Men’s Basketball Championship focused considerable traditional media attention on the Ferris State Men’s Basketball team, with live national game and post-game coverage by CBS and subsequent feature in a multitude of national news outlets.
Junior center Zach Hankins and head coach Andy Bronkema
Ferris State head coach Andy Bronkema and junior center Zach Hankins accepted their National Association of Basketball Coaches honors in the NABC Guardians of the Game event, live-streamed on the NABC Facebook page.
There was no shortage of fun moments, such as when Rob Bentley and Sandy Gholston, both university communications staff and veteran announcers for Ferris State Athletics, found themselves in the limelight when MLive covered their impassioned narration of the game’s final seconds, or when Bronkema later served as a guest weatherperson on local network Fox17 during the team’s April 19 visit to the studio.
See the MLive story on Bentley and Gholston at
http://www.mlive.com/sports/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2018/03/listen_to_final_seconds_as_fer.html.
Watch Bronkema’s guest weather forecast at
http://www.ferrisstatebulldogs.com/sports/mbkb/2017-18/videos/20180424-6jt1hxin.
Game announcers Sandy Gholston and Rob Bentley
However, it was on Twitter that the Bulldogs’ victory truly went viral, with fans and alums around the world following the game and joining in the championship celebration.
In all, there were 2,498 tweets mentioning @ferrismbball during the championship game on March 24, with more than 12,900 total Twitter mentions of the team’s account during the week of the championship, when the university overall saw a flurry of activity with more than 19,400 total mentions.