By: Nolan Alexander
KENNESAW, Ga. - What began as a season of hope, morphed into a moment that captivated a campus, united a community, and furthered Kennesaw State University's rise to a nationwide audience.
The KSU men's basketball team closed the 2025-26 season with an inspired 7-2 run, entered the Conference USA Tournament as the No. 6 seed and cut down the nets as champions. The energetic run triggered a wave of institutional pride and a 10-day integrated communications effort that generated approximately $33.9 million in total ad value equivalency and more than 5.12 billion audience impressions.
The Owls did something no other team in the country accomplished this postseason. KSU knocked off three top-four seeds in a single conference tournament when it defeated No. 3 Western Kentucky, No. 2 Sam Houston and No. 4 Louisiana Tech in the championship game to claim the program's first-ever CUSA title in just its second year in the league.
When the NCAA Tournament bracket was revealed on Selection Sunday, March 15, KSU fans returned to VyStar Arena for a watch party that turned electric the moment the Owls' name appeared on the screen. Seeded No. 14 in the West Region, KSU drew a first-round matchup against No. 3 Gonzaga, one of college basketball's most storied programs, at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon.
In the March 19 first-round game, KSU played with the poise of a team that belonged. The Owls led for most of the opening half before eventually falling to Gonzaga 75-66, earning respect from a national audience.
KSU deployed creative and communications staff to Huntsville, Alabama, and Portland, producing real-time content that brought the experience back to the campus community and national audiences simultaneously. Alumni data added further dimension to the moment, revealing more than 240 KSU and Southern Polytechnic State University graduates in the Greater Portland area and nearly 3,000 on the West Coast, a footprint that amplified KSU's presence during one of college sports' most-watched windows of the year.
The integrated campaign surrounding the run to March Madness generated 1,230 total media mentions with coverage spanning CBS, Good Morning America, ESPN, Fox Sports, TBS, Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sports Network, WXIA-TV and WAGA-TV.
KSU used the tournament window to reinforce that broader story, activating a homepage takeover linking March Madness momentum to institutional milestones under the banner "A University on the Rise" and directing audiences to KSU's Annual Report.
University and Athletics social channels were central to the campaign's reach, combining for 424 posts and generating more than 6 million impressions, 350,700 engagements and 1.88 million video views across the postseason window.
Athletics team-owned basketball accounts led with 3.74 million impressions, 200,000 engagements and 960,000 video views. The Athletics department published 11 news pages, including a dedicated media buzz page, eight photo galleries and a tournament central page, supporting 366 social posts.
KSUOwls.com recorded 544,326 unique pageviews, nearly twice its monthly average, during the combined CUSA and NCAA Tournament window. Concurrent users on the KSU homepage, Kennesaw.edu, increased four times during live gameplay, with unique visits exceeding year-over-year projections by the same margin.
The 1,230 earned media mentions spanning national, regional and local outlets were anchored by a coordinated media relations effort from KSU Athletic and Strategic Communications and Marketing teams. Two KSU News features, "Momentum builds at KSU as Owls return to March Madness" and "Athletics momentum carries Owl Nation to Oregon, March Madness," supported the postseason narrative throughout the run.
In all, the dedicated efforts by the KSU men's basketball program, led by Ben Jobe Award winner Antoine Pettway, set the stage for KSU to further its national prominence in all forms of media.
