For much of his tour of duty in Operation Enduring Freedom, Air Force Tech Sgt. Brett Johnson had one big worry: How was the Jayhawks’ season going?

Johnson was deployed in September from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota to Masirah Island, Oman. For security reasons, he was banned from communicating with outsiders via Internet, telephone or mail for a couple of months.

“So, of course, during this entire time I was pulling my hair out wondering what my Hawks were doing,” said Johnson, who lived 12 years in Lawrence before moving away in 1977.

It was months before his sister, Kristi Johnson, finally was permitted to give him regular updates on the Jayhawks’ season.

“There were many KU alums that worked in the medical tents, and they were excited to finally get a piece of the news,” Johnson said.

Yes, winning the NCAA basketball tournament is a formidable undertaking. But die-hard Jayhawk fans like Johnson, some situated in the globe’s most remote corners, routinely dribble through a full-court press to follow the team. It seems no obstacle of latitude or longitude can stop them from getting their fix.

Examples are deeper than the Kansas University bench.

Jetting to games

For the past year, Steve and Shelley Casagrande have been bicycling around the world. They’ve lived overseas since 1995 and long have grappled with the dearth of college basketball news in the foreign press. Internet hookups recently have enabled them to listen to KU games while in Australia, Spain and New Zealand.

And they’re not above jetting to the United States to close the geographical gap on KU basketball.

“Last year,” said Steve Casagrande, who graduated from KU’s engineering school with degrees in 1987 and 1988, “we flew back from Hong Kong to New York City for the Coaches vs. Cancer tourney, then flew out again.”

Kansas native Mark Mosier, a 1980 KU grad, doesn’t let the fact he lives in Clarinda, Iowa, stop his regular attendance at Allen Fieldhouse.

“I obtained season tickets, bought a fast airplane, put an old car at the Lawrence airport and make all the home games and many of the away games,” he said.

He even had the plane’s identification number changed to end in “KU.”

Laptop mission

Catherine Williams-Gilliard, who graduated from KU in 1977, borrowed a laptop computer from her guide and interpreter in the Congo while on a missionary assignment to keep track of KU in this month’s Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City, Mo.

“I booted up to find that KU had disposed of Colorado again in the quarterfinals,” she said.

In China, KU fanatic Mark Baczynski has twice made a three-hour train trip to Hong Kong to watch Kansas basketball games on a big-screen television at Hong Kong’s Hard Rock Cafe.

“Oddly enough there were many KU supporters alongside of me rooting and cheering just as loud as I was,” he said. “I guess the Jayhawks are worldwide.”

The team even won over Peter Janda, who was an exchange student at KU from Dortmund, Germany. He had never heard of college basketball before he arrived in Lawrence in 1999.

Wee-hours broadcast

Listening to games in Germany on the Internet wasn’t easy, given the seven-hour time difference. KU’s games often started at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. Germany time.

“I still stayed up late a lot of times,” Janda said.

Luke Whittemore, a 1997 Lawrence High School grad, drinks tea and munches on biscuits (that’s cookies for you Americans) while listening to the Jayhawks from Oxford, England, where he’s studying environmental change and management as a Rhodes Scholar.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t convinced anyone to stay up late and listen to the games with me,” the U.S. Naval Academy graduate said. “It’d be nice if British television realized there is more to the world than rugby and cricket.”

Cliff Cain, who grew up in Ottawa and witnessed many games in Allen Fieldhouse, has lived in Japan the past five years. His colleagues at work can’t understand his obsession with the Jayhawks.

“Once, I found out the game would be televised in Guam and I caught a flight from Tokyo and spent the weekend,” he said.

‘Wish I was home’

Even in Wisconsin, where the Jayhawks are headed for a Midwest Regional showdown with Illinois at the Kohl Center in Madison, folks have it hard.

Steve Gantz, a 1988 KU graduate in Antigo, Wis., said northern Wisconsin might as well be a foreign country in terms of television coverage of KU.

“I call our local television station pleading to show the KU game when it is a regional broadcast,” Gantz said. “They always seem to show Duke instead.”

Maj. Kurtis Houk of the Kansas Army National Guard has been in the military 24 years and away from home more times than he can count. While separated from his wife, Patricia, and three children, David, Aric and Erina, in Lawrence, Houk said the Jayhawks have remained a steadfast topic in e-mails, telephone calls and letters.

“On game day, regardless of where I am in the world, I know they are watching the ‘Hawks,” he said. “I also know they are thinking about me and wishing I could be there with them, just as I am thinking of them and wishing I could be home.”