Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know: Every one of Kansas University’s women’s home basketball games will be on live television next season. All of them.

Kathleen Hickert, for one, wasn’t aware of that fact, and she’s president of the KU women’s basketball booster club, formerly the Courtsiders but now known as the KU Hardwood Club.

“I can see that two ways,” said Hickert, a Topeka realtor who played basketball for the Jayhawks in the early 1970s. “Either the team will be really good and people will want to see them in person, or they won’t want to go when they see all those empty seats.”

Actually, it won’t matter. The whole idea of live TV is to avoid the out-of-sight, out-of-mind factor. Professional sports teams learned long ago that televising home games didn’t affect attendance as much as they had feared, and that keeping your product fresh in the public’s mind is much more important.

In the same breath, don’t discount the recruiting factor. Contemporary prospects want to know more about a school than its academics, its facilities and its coaches.

They want to know how many games are televised.

A total of 18 KU’s women’s basketball games will be televised — 16 from Allen Fieldhouse and two from the road. The bulk of those home telecasts will be available only on Sunflower Broadband Cable 6, which services markets in Lawrence, Eudora, Tonganoxie, Basehor and Piper.

Sunflower Broadband isn’t ESPN, but it’s something. Live TV is a big step to change the image of KU women’s basketball.

“The perception,” Hickert said, “is we’ve been forgotten because men’s basketball is so strong. Women’s basketball has been the red-headed stepchild.”

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Three straight losing seasons haven’t helped, yet even when KU boasted strong women’s teams the emphasis leaned so heavily toward the men that the women were all but ignored.

Just being on television now gives the KU women’s basketball program authentic exposure. At the same time, the radio network has been expanded into the Kansas City and Wichita areas. Granted, radio does not wield the same clout as television, but being on the AM and FM dials reinforces a program’s viability.

First-year coach Bonnie Henrickson has been pushing for these necessities, just as she pushed for her women to play a larger role in “Late Night in the Phog.” Permission granted. The women will scrimmage — sans coaches — against a group of male students dubbed “The Dream Team.”

“They’re all tall,” KU guard Erica Hallman said of The Dream Team, “but height isn’t everything. We’ll go out and run and gun and have some fun.”

Participating in Late Night can’t help but infuse those women who suffered through the gut-wrenching emotions of longtime coach Marian Washington’s leave of absence and eventual retirement with a dose of self-esteem. Henrickson also has tried to build confidence by stressing the importance of strength and conditioning and emphasizing how they’ll need to outwork and outhustle opponents next winter.

“I really believe they feel better about themselves,” Henrickson said.

On paper, the Jayhawks should stop feeling good about themselves midway through the Big 12 Conference season, because there’s no sugarcoating the fact Henrickson will be fortunate if this team finishes in the Big 12 Conference’s upper division.

Henrickson will field a team with no size, no bench and no go-to player, with the possible exception of junior Crystal Kemp, who will cause teams trouble with her deft shooting touch. Foes with strong inside games will give the Jayhawks fits, and KU doesn’t appear to have the firepower to counter inside attacks with its three-point shooting.

A makeover of Kansas University women’s basketball clearly is under way, but it’s not an extreme makeover. That won’t happen until the Jayhawks start winning again.