• Women’s Basketball: Two Tickets Punch to NCAA Women’s Final Four; Two Games Remain Tuesday Night
• Men’s Basketball: NIT Semifinals on ESPN2 Tonight; Championship Game Thursday
• Recruiting: National High School Basketball Invitation Begins Thursday
• Gruden’s QB Camp: Geno Smith and Matt Barkley Specials to Debut This Week
• Baseball: Six Games on ESPNU and No. 3 Vanderbilt at No. 11 Ole Miss Series on ESPN3
• Lacrosse: Top-10 Battle Saturday on ESPNU
• Softball: Missouri at Alabama and Baylor at Oklahoma on ESPNU
• Star Wars Bracket: The Light Side vs. The Dark Side Determined on UNITE Monday

Media contact: [email protected]

Women’s Basketball: Two Tickets Punch to NCAA Women’s Final Four; Two Games Remain Tuesday Night

With two of the top seeds falling in the Regional Semifinals, the Spokane (Wash.) and Oklahoma City Regional Finals on ESPN and WatchESPN have even more storylines after No. 5 seed Louisville’s stunning defeat of defending national champion and No. 1 seed Baylor and No. 4 seed Georgia upsetting No.1 seed Stanford.

Tuesday night’s action includes No. 2 Duke vs. No. 1 Notre Dame from Norfolk, Va., at 7 p.m., followed by No. 5 Louisville against No. 2 Tennessee at 9 p.m. from Oklahoma City. The winners of each Regional Final will advance to the 2013 Women’s Final Four in New Orleans – joining No. 1 seed Connecticut and No. 2 seed California.

ESPN is in its 18th year of exclusive coverage of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship and 11th year covering all 63 games. All three games and the NCAA Women’s Final Four Specials live from New Orleans will be carried on ESPN and WatchESPN. Full production details will be announced later this week.

Men’s Basketball: NIT Semifinals on ESPN2 Tonight; Championship Game Thursday
Exclusive coverage of the entire 76^th National Invitation Tournament (NIT) continues today, April 2, at 7 p.m. on ESPN2 with the NIT Semifinal games. BYU vs. Baylor tips off first at Madison Square Garden, followed by Iowa vs. Maryland. Tonight’s winners will move ahead to the championship game airing Thursday, April 4, at 9 p.m. on ESPN. Play-by-play commentator Bob Wischusen will be joined by analyst Bill Raftery for the semifinals, with the addition of analyst Bob Knight for the title game.

Recruiting: National High School Basketball Invitation Begins Thursday
ESPN’s coverage of the 2012-13 high school basketball season will include the National High School Invitational Tournament (NHSI) for the fifth consecutive year. Action begins Thursday, April 4, at noon on ESPNU, with No. 3 seed Prime Prep (Texas) facing No. 6 Blanche Ely (Fla.) in the opening boys’ game. The event, organized by Paragon Marketing Group, will be held at Georgetown Preparatory School’s Hanley Center for Athletic Excellence in Bethesda, Md., and features 10 games with several of the country’s best boys and girls high school basketball teams.

For the first time, every boys team in the NHSI field is ranked in the ESPN 25 Power Rankings and five are in the top 10. The defending champions, Findlay Prep (Nev.), returns to clinch their fourth NHSI title after an undefeated regular season. In the girls tournament, Archbishop Spalding (Md.) is seeded No. 1 with 2011 NHSI Champion Dr. Phillips (Fla.) at No. 2. Each NHSI Boys Quarterfinal will air on ESPNU on Thursday, with the semifinals on ESPN2 on Friday, April 5, followed by the final matchup on ESPN on Saturday, April 6, at 1 p.m.

The NHSI caps off 24 games of the country’s best high school basketball teams playing on ESPN networks during the 2012-13 season. Full Schedule  

** For media credentials: [email protected]

Gruden’s QB Camp: Geno Smith and Matt Barkley Specials to Debut This Week
The fourth season of Jon Gruden’s QB Camp series continues this week with the debut of new shows highlighting two of the top quarterbacks in the 2013 NFL Draft class: West Virginia’s Geno Smith (Thursday, April 4, at 8:30 p.m. on ESPN2) and USC’s Matt Barkley (Saturday, April 6, at 11 p.m. on ESPN2). In all, 12 prospects are participating in Gruden’s QB Camp in 2013, including a trio of non-signal-callers (Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o, Texas A&M’s Luke Joeckel and South Carolina’s Marcus Lattimore). New shows will continue to debut throughout the month of April. The entire 2013 Gruden’s QB Camp television schedule; Downloadable photos

This week’s Gruden’s QB Camp TV Schedule:

Baseball: Six Games on ESPNU and No. 3 Vanderbilt at No. 11 Ole Miss Series on ESPN3
The upcoming college baseball schedule will include six games on ESPNU, highlighted by the network’s weekly Thursday Night SEC Baseball Game of the Week and ACC Monday telecasts, and all three games of the No. 3 Vanderbilt at No. 11 Ole Miss series on ESPN3. In addition, ESPNU will televise two contests on Saturday, April 6, and two on Sunday, April 7. Highlights:

• The second week of the ESPNU Thursday Night SEC Baseball Game of the Week, on April 4, will pit No 12 Arkansas at Alabama at 8 p.m.
• ESPN3 will showcase the three-game series between SEC rivals No. 5 Vanderbilt and No. 16 Ole Miss Friday, April 5 (at 7:30 p.m.), Saturday, April 6 (5 p.m.) and Sunday, April 7 (2:30 p.m.).
• An ESPNU Sunday afternoon doubleheader on April 7 will feature No. 5 Florida State at in-state rival Miami at 1 p.m. and California at defending National Champion Arizona in a Pac-12 showdown at 4 p.m.
• ESPNU’s ACC Monday matchup on April 8 will pit No. 8 Virginia at Wake Forest at 7 p.m.

Overall, ESPN will showcase a record 151 regular-season and conference championship games exclusively across ESPNU, ESPN3, ESPN2 and ESPN. ESPN3 will provide coverage of more than 65 additional games in markets outside the territory of the conference footprint of that game, bringing the total to more than 215 games.

Lacrosse: Top-10 Battle Saturday on ESPNU
Top 10 teams are in action Saturday, April 6 – featuring No. 8 Syracuse at No 7 Princeton at 5 p.m. on ESPNU and WatchESPN. Another top matchup showcases No. 20 Albany at No. 11 Johns Hopkins on Friday, April 5, at 7 p.m., also on ESPNU and WatchESPN.

The ESPNU Warrior Wednesday Night Game of the Week will feature Villanova at Georgetown at 5 p.m. During the game, the Warrior Game of the Week Chat powered by Inside Lacrosse is hosted by Inside Lacrosse vice president/editor-in-chief John Jiloty and online manager Matt Kinnear. The weekly chat is available on ESPNU.com and Inside Lacrosse.com.

Softball: Missouri at Alabama and Baylor at Oklahoma on ESPNU
ESPN’s largest schedule of college softball continues this weekend with two games between No. 6 Missouri and defending national champion No. 7 Alabama, both on ESPNU: Friday at 9 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. Last year, Alabama became the first team in SEC history to win a softball national championship. ESPNU will also televise No. 16 Baylor plays at Oklahoma Sunday at 3 p.m. Full Schedule  

Star Wars Bracket: The Light Side vs. The Dark Side Determined on UNITE Monday
As brackets are busted around the country, the force is especially strong with those participating in “This is Madness” StarWars.com character contest. It doesn’t take Jedi mind-tricks to determine the winner of #LightSide vs. #DarkSide matches, only fan votes. Every night the matchups are previewed and final results revealed on ESPN’s late night entertainment show, UNITE, airing weeknights at midnight on ESPNU.

On Monday, April 8, at midnight, after the new men’s NCAA basketball champion is crowned, the ultimate galaxy winner will be revealed during the UNITE: Star Wars Special. UNITE hosts will interview Star Wars guests, Yoda will voice the top 10 Jedi moments of the college hoop season and several characters will be in studio to preview and reveal the ultimate winner in the final matchup.

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