PARTY Page 14 • The Battalion Sports Thursday • September 14 ) Women’s basketball gets ftvn: boost in national coverage Sponsored by: KBTX • 3 SSnL FRITO LAY BEAT THE HELL OUTTA TULSA! AGGIE BOWL WATCH REGISTER TO WIN! □ ESPN vows to show regular-season games and NCAA tournament and championship games. GRAND PRIZE AGGIE BOWL PACKAGE Includes: 2 Tickets, Transportation and Hotel Accomodations Drawing Each Thursday Prior to Game * 2 Free Tickets to an Aggie Home Game * An Aggie Tailgate Party * $50 Kroger Gift Certificate * Pepsi, Doritos & Lays * Cooler * Autogrpahed Football DBS MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Women’s basket ball, once an afterthought with network execu- ! tives, keeps getting more and more air time. One day after the Prime Network announced it would televise women’s games on Sunday nights throughout the season, ESPN and ESPN2 said Wednesday it will carry 64 games in 1995-96, several in prime time. The ESPN package includes telecasts on nine Friday night during the season. Two games will be shown on three of those nights. All the Friday night games are on ESPN2, which the net work says now reaches 24.8 million U.S. households and should pass 25 million by Oct. 1. ESPN reaches 66.8 million homes. Between them, ESPN and ESPN2 will carry 23 regular-season games, 25 NCAA tournament games seven conference championship and the NCAA Division II title game. games They’ll also carry eight 'exhibition games played by the new U.S. national team, which will become the 1996 Olympic team. With its ’95-96 schedule, ESPN will more than double its telecasts of women’s basketball. Last year, the network showed 27 games. “The time was right for growth of the sport,” ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys said. “We’ve seen an increase in attendance at women’s games. We’ve seen the growth of the Fi nal Four. CBS had a terrific rating for the Final Four last year.” “Also, we’ve been fine tuning ESPN2 since that went on two years ago, looking for ways to strengthen our program lineup. We thought could serve our audience by showing a pri time women’s game of the week.” ESPN last December won the exclusive rift to the NCAA women’s tournament and will place CBS at the Final Four. All of the 1996 Final Four games will! shown in prime time — the semifinals on Frii night, March 29, and the finals on Sunday nisi, March 31. ^ “From that, we wanted to increase our mitment elsewhere,” Soltys said. That Jed to the deal for showing the eift national team games, the first of whir x, ov. 5 at defending nationa ampion Connecticut, and... regular-season package, whit begins Nov. 19 with Connect cut playing Louisiana Tech the Tip-Off Classic Knoxville, Tenn. The Prime package will fe* ture 10 Sunday night gamei starting Dec. 17. CBS alsowili show a handful of games, h eluding Connecticut at Ten nessee, and many schools have heir own TV packages. Connecticut, for example, hasi with Connecticut Public Televi sion for the televising of at least 17 game each of the next three seasons. The result is more women’s basketball on T than ever. “It’s about time,” said Nancy Lieberman Cline, the former Old Dominion star who’ll an nounce games on both Prime and ESPN. “This gives a chance for us to see a lot of great worn en’s basketball players that are out there but have never got the attention. “Now little girls will be able to align them selves with the players they like, to copy their skills, to try to play the way they do. It’s a great situation for women’s basketball to really accept that role as a role model.” 16 Oz. Btl. Spalding Sports Refresher 3 or 5 Lb. Pkg. Fresh Flavorseal Ground Beef 99