Coaches gear up for a different scene this season
Looking ahead recently at an ambitious non-conference schedule, it was as if the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic plowed headlong into one of Notre Dame men’s basketball coach Mike Brey’s players all at once.
In a normal season, a trip to Rupp Arena to play Kentucky is accompanied by the knowledge that a sea of more than 20,500 mostly blue-clad fans will be waiting. Of course, this isn’t going to be a normal season — if it’s really any kind of season at all.
When Notre Dame visits Kentucky on Dec. 12, the scene may be positively tranquil for a change.
“He said, ‘There probably won’t be 20,000 people in there, will there?’” Brey said of the conversation he had with one of his players. “I said, ‘No, there probably won’t,’ and I think at that point, we were all like, ‘Wow, it’s going to be different.’”
It’s already been “different,” and the first ball hasn’t been tossed in the air yet in a game.
Today, the ACC has 10 of its 15 member schools in action on the first day of the men’s basketball season, beginning with Virginia Tech hosting Radford at noon. It was going to be 11 ACC teams on the floor today, but Duke had to postpone its opener against Gardner-Webb because a player from Gardner-Webb tested positive for the coronavirus.
As of Monday evening, Syracuse hadn’t resumed practices after workouts were put on pause Nov. 15 because of coronavirus issues, including a positive test for coach Jim Boeheim. Syracuse is slated to open its season Friday against Bryant.
Keeping players and coaches healthy this winter is destined to be a constant struggle. One positive coronavirus test on a team could result, in some situations, in the vast majority of his teammates and coaches having to quarantine for
up to two weeks.
“I think all of us coaches and people that are involved going forward understand the challenges that we face this year,” Pittsburgh coach Jeff Capel said. “It’s unlike anything that anyone has been through. We all have our fingers crossed and are hopeful that we’ll play as many games as we possibly can, but if you look at sports across the board, any sport that’s not been in a bubble has been subjected to disruption. I anticipate that we all will at some point, but we’re hopeful that we won’t.”
With coronavirus positives surging in several states, getting through a 27-game slate seems unlikely at best for most college basketball programs.
“This is a day-by-day thing,” said Boston College coach Jim Christian, who added his team has had to quarantine one team manager and one walk-on. “It can change today, as we all know. It’s the world we’re living in during the next two months. It’s a lot of stress.”
Several ACC teams are participating in early-season bubble events, including Virginia and Virginia Tech i n Uncasvill e, Connecticut, to reduce travel and potential exposure. Louisville is hosting its own bubble schedule of games beginning Wednesday.
“People on the outside are going to say what they want,” Louisville coach Chris Mack said regarding the daunting task of moving forward with this season. “People are going to speculate. People are going to say, ‘Hey, we shouldn’t be playing games, we shouldn’t be doing this during a pandemic.’ Everybody is going to have an opinion. The best thing I can do as a coach is to try to be as transparent as I can as a coach, make sure that they understand we’re going to have to be flexible, things may change from day-to-day and I think you learn when you go through some tough times.”
Coach Mike Krzyzewski will be without the sizable home-court edge generated by the “Cameron Crazies”
in Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time in his 41 seasons at Duke.
It’s the sort of variable a coach can’t prepare for and has no way of knowing in advance how his team will react.
“Other teams really looked at that as a challenge coming in to beat Duke in Cameron because of our fans, and that created many unbelievable games over the years,” Krzyzewski said. “It’ll be interesting to see how our opponents adjust to not having the Cameron Crazies in there, also.”
Brey calls it a season in which college basketball is “playing into the teeth of the virus.” It’s not ideal, but there’s no choice if the season is going to have any chance at success.
“We’re all very realistic,” Brey said. “I do think we’ve got to get started and we’ve got to try it. … We’ve got 27 games on the board. I don’t think any of us think that we’re going to get all 27 of our games in, but we’re going to try like heck to get most of them in.”