Tourney alternates not expecting call
Ahead of the NCAA Tournament, Louisville Coach Chris Mack and his players have the role of understudies: They will be the first replacements should a team from a multiple-bid conference be unable to play this week because of coronavirus issues.
Virginia, the tournament champion in 2019, and Kansas withdrew from their conference tournaments last week because of virus protocols. They earned at-large berths to the national tournament in Indiana, but whether they will be able to play remains an open question.
Alternates will be able to fill slots vacated by teams with coronavirus issues through 5 p.m. Central today. After that, vacated spots will not be filled, and an opposing team would advance via the no-contest rule, similar to a walkover in tennis. No replacement teams will enter the tournament once it begins with the First Four games Thursday.
After Louisville, the next three replacements are Colorado State, St. Louis and Mississippi. They were the first four teams to miss the cut for the 68-team field.
“No one’s wishing for anyone to get covid,” Mack said Monday on a conference call with reporters. “We’re not on hands and knees here praying for an outbreak. That’s just not us. So I hope every team that got selected is able to play in the tournament, and has a great experience.”
But Mack, whose team had four games postponed in February and ended up with a 13-7 record after losing to Duke in the second round of the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, said it was tough to come so close to making the field only to be excluded.
“The tournament committee has a tough job and we’re not a part of it, and I don’t see that changing,” he said.
While Mack said that Louisville will not play in the 16-team National Invitation Tournament beginning Wednesday in Frisco and Denton, Texas, the other replacement teams were planning on participating in it.
Colorado State Coach Niko Medved, whose team finished 18-6, told reporters Sunday that he did not believe the NCAA Tournament would end up needing one replacement team, never mind two.
“You want to be in March Madness,” Adam Thistlewood, a junior forward for Colorado State, said to The Denver Post. “But we can’t dwell on that. We’ve got to focus on the NIT coming up.”
St. Louis coach Travis Ford, whose team was on the bubble after finishing 14-6, told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he prepared his team for the seeming inevitability of playing their first game of the NIT on Saturday.
“They knew and seemed disappointed, but I couldn’t see any real emotion,” he said.
A spokesman for Mississippi said the team would be prepared to travel to Indianapolis if it was chosen, but otherwise would look forward to the NIT.
Kansas and Virginia withdrew from their conference tournaments after positive tests. Both teams must have seven consecutive days of negative tests before their arrival and then two negative PCR tests upon arrival at least 12 hours apart, Dan Gavitt, the NCAA senior vice president for basketball, said. Each team needs only five eligible players to participate, making it less likely that any replacement team will get the call.
Virginia Coach Tony Bennett said most of his team would remain in quarantine until Thursday because of contact tracing. The Cavaliers, the No. 4 seed in the West Region, will not travel to Indiana until Friday and will still need to have two days of negative tests before their game Saturday night with No. 13 Ohio. The NCAA essentially made Virginia an exception after initially saying teams had to arrive no later than Monday night, Gavitt said.
“They, like every single team and every individual here, will have seven days of negative tests,” Gavitt said. “It absolutely is a requirement. Had that not been able to happen, they would not have been able to participate in the tournament.”
He went on to say that if a similar situation had happened on Sunday or Monday, there would not have been enough time to participate.