National title gives UC Davis visibility

The memory of last weekend's national basketball championship is going to linger at the University of California, Davis, for a good long time.

Campus officials will make sure of it.

The nationally televised Aggie victory was clearly a huge boost for UC Davis athletics, but campus leaders say it also could have positive effects on a whole range of other university activities, from admissions to fund raising to alumni relations.

To get the maximum bounce from the big game, UC Davis officials plan to give the NCAA Division II championship abundant attention in their publications, fund drives and pitches to prospective students. It can only help complete the picture of UC Davis as a first-rate, well-rounded university, they say.

"We're going to play it up," said Gary Tudor, director of admissions and outreach at UC Davis. "This is another wonderful way of showing off the campus."

Final exams and spring break have postponed official campus celebrations until mid-April, but UC Davis still is bubbling with renewed pride after the Aggie men's 83-77 win over Kentucky Wesleyan. It was the fifth national title for a UC Davis team, joining two in women's tennis, one in men's tennis and one in men's golf.

The public reaction has been flattering: Legislators want the team to appear on the floors of the state Assembly and Senate. City councils and county boards of supervisors are drawing up proclamations of congratulations. Alumni chapters are requesting visits from players and coaches.

And electronic-mail messages are flooding the chancellor's office and athletic department from all over, many from people the recipients don't even know. One came from a man in Slovenia who just identified himself as a "UC Davis sports fan" and said he was thrilled by the victory.

"It's quite clear that this has generated an unusual sense of pride in folks, whether they're strong athletic fans or not," said UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef. "To have this great accomplishment is just good for people here, generally."

It is no easy task, Vanderhoef said, for a school without Division I sports to get the attention of millions of people on national television. The game accomplished that for UC Davis, placing it "on the map" and in the consciousness of many people across the nation.

Around campus last week, people were beginning to consider how to capitalize on the publicity.

"I know there are meetings going on as we speak, to look at how we maximize this opportunity," said Robert Kerr, executive director of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association.

Kerr's organization, for one, is planning an alumni membership drive that might offer championship T-shirts and bumper stickers. Admissions officers -- who are spending the next few weeks talking up UC Davis to students who were accepted for this fall but have not yet enrolled -- are inserting mentions of the game into their recruiting speeches.

The win certainly will aid the recruitment of student athletes, said Greg Warzecka, athletic director at UC Davis. But it also could play some role in attracting non-athletes to the 24,000-student campus.

It's not that one basketball game alone will convince hordes of students to attend UC Davis. But by enlarging upon the school's somewhat confined reputation -- by demonstrating that it has some national distinction and has more to offer than good programs in agriculture, veterinary medicine and wine production -- it may make some prospective students look twice.

"This is the kind of presence and visibility that causes people to investigate a campus they may not have before," said Tudor, the admissions director.

It couldn't have come at a better time. While UC Davis saw a 4 percent increase in applications this year, it was the smallest increase in the UC system. Campus officials have been fretting a little over what that says about UC Davis' visibility and attractiveness to students.

Part of the solution, they believe, is to raise the profile of the campus in places like Southern California, which has two-thirds of the state's potential UC students but usually gets little news about UC Davis.

"This did get into the news," Vanderhoef said of the game. "I truly hope it makes a difference."

University officials also are quietly hoping that a resurgence of fond feelings for UC Davis, sparked by the basketball championship, will produce a few more donations to the campus from alumni and others.

They aren't seeing it yet, though, and out of a sense of propriety they aren't offering any predictions.

"I don't have any evidence that things have changed," said Sue Francis, executive director of development for UC Davis. "But it's generally true that when there is a winning team, people do tend to feel closer to the university, and that heightened awareness and esprit de corps never hurts."

Even if the new money and new students don't show up, it's evident that many people in the UC Davis community have an extra spring in their step these days. And that may be valuable in its own right.

"The pride is oozing out of people -- basketball fans and non-basketball fans," said the alumni association's Kerr. "That's an intangible we won't know how to measure until we watch it for a while."