Nov. 3, 2005

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. - For the first time in Ohio Valley Conference history, a tournament champion other than men's basketball will be crowned on national television. ESPNU will be airing the title game of the 2005 O'Reilly OVC Women's Soccer Tournament, which is set for Sunday, Nov. 6 at 12:00 p.m. Central at Lakeside Field on the campus of Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill.

In addition, Sunday's live telecast will be carried regionally on UPN The Beat, a station out of Cape Girardeau, Mo., which reaches 180,000 households in the Paducah, Ky.-Cape Girardeau, Mo.-Harrisburg, Ill. market.

Semifinal action of the 2005 O'Reilly OVC Women's Soccer Tournament gets underway Friday, Nov. 4, with No. 2 seed and host Eastern Illinois taking on No. 3 Southeast Missouri at 10 a.m. Central, with top seed and regular-season champion Samford squaring off against fourth-seeded Murray State at 12:30 p.m. Central. The winners of Friday's contests will advance to Sunday's title game.

ESPNU, which currently reaches over 7.5 million households, was launched in March 2005 and will feature more than 300 live college sports events this year, including 12 Ohio Valley Conference events. In addition to the OVC soccer championship, ESPNU will televise the Nov. 20 finals of the 2005 O'Reilly OVC Volleyball Championship as well as the March 3 semifinal contests of the 2006 O'Reilly OVC Men's Basketball Tournament. In addition, ESPNU will air seven OVC regular-season men's basketball games and a Dec. 28 non-conference men's basketball contest between Southern Illinois and Murray State.

The Ohio Valley Conference is the nation's eighth-oldest NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletics conference, comprised of 11 member institutions from the states of Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee. The member institutions are: Austin Peay State University, Eastern Illinois University, Eastern Kentucky University, Jacksonville State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Samford University, Southeast Missouri State University, University of Tennessee at Martin, Tennessee State University and Tennessee Technological University. Additional information can be found at www.ovcsports.com.