Closed circuit: Trip leads to lockdown life
Limited options for hundreds of players to get out
At Victory Field in downtown Indianapolis on Wednesday, a couple of coaches running laps around the warning track passed different diversions scattered across the minor league ballpark.
In one section, a badminton net. In others, a soccer ball and a football. No sign of a basketball.
When the 1,500 or so players, coaches and staff members in town for the NCAA Tournament want to get a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of some green grass, this is their option. Their only option.
This is life at a tournament being played in a pandemic. The unspoken message: If they came to Indianapolis hoping for fun and games, they are not in the right place — at least not until tip-off.
“I’m in a bed for, like, 15 hours a day,” Iowa swingman Connor Mccaffery said in describing his new, austere routine in Indy.
It is, quite simply, how things have to be over the next three weeks. Starting Thursday, in an attempt to get through 67 games uninterrupted, the NCAA has placed players, coaches and staff under a virtual lock and key. They don’t like calling it a bubble, but semantics aside, there is no straying between the team hotels, the adjacent convention center for practice, meetings and 30-minute windows in the weight room, and Victory Field, home of Triple-a Indianapolis.
“We’ve been playing a lot of Spades,” Alabama forward Herb Jones said.
The Tar Heels might consider themselves lucky. They’re among the few teams not playing their first games in Indianapolis. Instead, North Carolina will face Wisconsin at Purdue’s home court, 70 miles away. It means the Heels get to practice there, too.
“Today, the monotony is really going to be broken up,” coach Roy Williams said. “We’re going to have two and a half hours in the bus. … It hasn’t exactly been Maui.”