The first few weeks of the college basketball season feature games in which NCAA Division II schools like Ouachita and Henderson schedule games against NCAA Division I universities for a variety of reasons.

This past week, Henderson’s men and women each played Arkansas State, Ouachita’s women’s team played Northwestern State in Louisiana and Ouachita’s men’s team traveled to Lexington, Ken., to face the Kentucky Wildcats. One of the biggest reasons that head coach Charlie Schaef was excited about the trip is that it would provide his players memories that they would never forget.

Ouachita senior guard and Arkadelphia native Jaranimo Marks is a mass communications major at Ouachita. Marks had a class assignment to write a story or first-person column for last week’s issue of the campus newspaper The Signal and he wrote about how exciting it was going to be for him to be able to play against a legendary program like Kentucky in a historic setting in Rupp Arena.

The story written by Marks was neat enough to stand alone as a piece, but it was what happened after the story was posted on the newspaper’s Web site, www.obusignal.com, that really makes the story neat and serves as an example of the power of the internet.

As is the case in many of these exhibition games between big-time programs and their Division II counterparts, fans don’t know a whole lot about the opponent.  Therefore they scour the internet via Google or any other search engine and try to find out about the upcoming opponent.

A lot of these are people who post on a message board of their favorite team. When they find a nugget about the opponent, they report back to their message board and the viral nature of the internet takes off.

Such was the case with Jaranimo’s story on the Ouachita campus newspaper website. Slowly but surely, Kentucky fan after Kentucky fan clicked on to the story to read about how excited Marks and his teammates were about playing against Kentucky and how much they respected the tradition of the Wildcat program. Playing against UK and in Rupp Arena was obviously going to be a big deal.

Many Wildcat fans left comments on the site, and each one of them was complimentary of Marks and appreciated the sentiment. Now, some of them did manage to get a jab in and show their loyalty to Big Blue, but it was obvious that they appreciated Jaranimo’s article.

In the piece, Marks mentions that he has been a fan of college basketball since he was a youngster and that Kentucky is one of the first places that comes to mind when one thinks about college hoops. He also mentioned that he couldn’t wait for 15,000 people to scream against him.

Below are a couple of my favorite comments:

•From Wes in Louisville, KY: “Reading this is what makes me proud to be a Kentucky fan. Good luck tomorrow night, God bless.”

•From Kentucky Fan:  “As a Kentucky fan, your comments are greatly appreciated, and your reverence is very humbling. Best of luck to you and your team this year, and I hope you enjoy Rupp Arena as much as we do.”

•From Todd: “Jaranimo, Nice story. I hope you enjoy your trip to Kentucky. Believe me there is NOTHING like the experience of Rupp Arena, the tradition of Kentucky, and fans of UK Basketball….BTW, Rupp holds 24,000++, so there will probably be a few more than 15,000 cheering fans.”

•From Mike: “It’s 24,000, not 15. And we’re scouting you.”

•From Ron: “Mr. Marks, How refreshing to read your reaction to playing the Kentucky Wildcats. I too, have been a fan of college basketball since I was a little kid and Kentucky IS the “Roman Empire” of collegiate roundball. The tradition is unsurpassed…By the way, there will be 24,000 fans there (not 15,000) to (respectfully, I hope) cheer against you on Friday night.”

•From Doyle: “Great article. I am happy for you and your chance to live one of your dreams. I hope you make the most of this opportunity, and that your team leaves the game healthy. With that being said, I am a Kentucky fan and there will be 23,000 fans, not 15,000.”

That’s just a sample of the 40-plus comments the story generated, all of which were from UK fans. The story became the most-viewed story ever on the paper’s website, dethroning coverage of Ouachita’s annual Homecoming production Tiger Tunes.

Doyle was right – there were over 23,000 people to watch an exhibition game against a school that they had never heard of and couldn’t pronounce the name when they did see it on paper. 

And for Marks, a senior on this year’s Ouachita basketball team, it was undoubtedly a good beginning to the end of his college career.

Chris Babb is the director of external alumni at Ouachita Baptist University. E-mail him at babbc@obu.edu.