Beginning this basketball season, Learfield Sports’ Norse Sports Properties, the media production company that produces the NKU basketball games for the radio, began producing a weekly radio show featuring NKU coaches and players to recap the previous week’s games.

The show, produced every Monday night at NKU sponsor Mellow Mushroom, is hosted by the voice of the Norse, Jim Kelch, and color analyst Steve Moeller.

“It’s a coaches’ show to enhance coverage of the team for the fans and for the radio station,” Kelch said. “From a marketing standpoint, it gives a marketing arm of NKU, which is Learfield Sports, a product to sell.”

The show is broadcast on ESPN 1530 at 7:00 p.m. and begins with Kelch and Moeller recapping the previous week’s games.

Men’s Basketball Head Coach Dave Bezold then joins Kelch and Moeller, to talk abouthis team’s performance the previous week.

“I like the fact that you get to re-hash,” Bezold said. “Sometimes it’s hard because you come off the road trip, you lose a couple games and you’ve got to talk about it. But you know, it’s sports and that’s what you do. You want the good, you want the bad, and you want the publicity.”

Occasionally, Kelch and Moeller invite a player or players up to interview them if they had an above-average performance in one or both of the games that are being discussed.

Thirty minutes into the show, Bezold steps down from the table and NKU Head Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Plitzuweit steps up. Kelch and Moeller then interview Plitzuweit on the performance of the women’s basketball team in the previous week.

“I like that we get an opportunity to meet with some of our fans that come down to the radio show and inform them of what’s going on,” Plitzuweit said.

The Norse Coaches’ Radio Show is consistent with other area schools. The University of Cincinnati produces the Mick Cronin Show, featuring the UC men’s basketball head coach; Xavier University produces the Chris Mack Show, featuring the Xavier men’s basketball head coach; and the University of Kentucky produces the John Calipari Show, featuring the UK men’s basketball head coach.

The NKU show, however, is the only one to feature both the men’s and women’s basketball head coaches.

Kelch, a veteran sports broadcaster who is also a play-by-play announcer for the Major League Baseball Cincinnati Reds, enjoys doing the show.

“I like doing it because it gives us an opportunity to talk more and maybe get into depth more with what is going on with the team that we can’t always do (in the postgame show),” Kelch said.

According to Kelch, the radio team is only given two or three minutes with Coach Bezold to talk about the game and break it down, whereas they are given 15 or 20 minutes with Bezold on the Coaches Show.

“Ideally, we can get into things here on the show that we didn’t get into during the postgame show itself,” Kelch said.

Before the season began, Learfield Sports’ Norse Sports Properties, NKU, and iHeart Media announced an agreement that all NKU men’s basketball games would be broadcast on the iHeart family of stations, which includes ESPN 1530, Fox Sports 1360, and 55 KRC.