Enjoy what you can, while you can
Latest quarantine shows we can’t assume anything about rest of season
The reality of 2020 slapped basketball fans on the side of the head over the weekend and the lights have been turned off again on what we hoped might carry us through the darkest of winters.
The UConn men’s game Saturday in Mohegan Sun’s “Bubbleville” was canceled after a member of the N.C.
State program tested positive for COVID-19. On Sunday, UConn announced its own positive test and shut down its operation. Team activities are suspended for the second time in about a month, and Friday’s Big East opener against St. John’s at Gampel Pavilion has been postponed.
That game will be made up. Eventually. We presume. Or, we hope.
Because that’s all 2020 really offers: hope, tempered by wild uncertainty. We have been in the clutches of a pandemic for nine months. We’re still constricted by protocols that render so much of life as we knew it virtually impossible.
Enjoy whatever you can, whenever you can, until we’re all free again to actually expect as much as we hope
for.
It seems less likely with each passing week that the NCAA can make it through winter and into some version of March Madness without putting a halt — temporary, or indefinite — to the entire sport somewhere along the way. We can hope all we want for a college basketball season to come together and remain together, and maybe that’s what will actually happen, but we’re living in limbo and we will continue to.
We must recognize that, swallow it, know that anything worth celebrating requires the walk of a tight rope. Appreciate any little piece of UConn basketball we can squeeze out of this awful scenario, because the sport is a microcosm for what life has become in 2020.
It is wholly unpredictable, largely uncontrollable. We don’t know what’s around the corner, other than more isolation and daily COVID tests for members of a team dear to the state’s collective heart. Hope is wonderful, even necessary, but hope is not a plan and many plans just do not stick right now.
Is the season doomed? I have no idea.
I know there have been as many COVID-19 shutdowns as games played at UConn, with the women’s own quarantine — of 10 days — having recently expired. I know indicators on the virus front point to worsening conditions in the coming weeks and months. I know dozens of Division I teams, men’s and women’s, have already experienced shutdowns. I know No. 1 Gonzaga vs. No. 2 Baylor on the men’s side was called off Saturday at the 11th hour. I know the list of postponements, cancellations and rescheduled games is getting ridiculous, the daily scroll through Twitter enough to cramp the thumb and brain.
I just don’t know what’s next. No one does. There is a mountain of postseason money on the line, and it’s anyone’s guess to what extent the NCAA will ceaselessly pursue it.
It’s all so aggravating, every little emotional tug, logistical nightmare and health scare while on standby for the vaccine.
The irony: This was supposed to be a time of such freedom and joy. UConn basketball was to be such a galvanizing force.
The public is divided in so many ways as we crawl toward the end of 2020 — politically, even in how it views virus responses by a nation and governing bodies at various levels. But the state was set to come together behind one cause: UConn basketball, Big East UConn basketball.
The Huskies became official conference members fiveplus months ago, on July 1. The pandemic raged on all the while but did dip enough in Connecticut and surrounding states for all that hope to temporarily blind us to what a great undertaking a 2020-21 season actually would be.
Dan Hurley’s vision for the men’s program is taking hold with better recruits, better results. Geno Auriemma’s women are right where they’ve often been, in position to skip down the Big East road to more Final Fours.
But before we can even get a feel for what Hurley’s team is truly capable of, and before we can even see Auriemma’s team take the court, everything has been put on hold time and again.
The men’s program announced a positive test Nov. 5 and halted its operation for 14 days, returning to practice Nov. 19 before opening the season Nov. 25. The women, who shut down Nov. 23, are scheduled to open the season Saturday against UMass Lowell at Gampel Pavilion. The women’s program began practicing Thursday after a 10-day shutdown and multiple negative tests by student-athletes.
Monday was day one of a second quarantine for the men. The previous one lasted 14 days, mandatory at the time. The university’s athletic department could opt to work with health officials toward reducing that to 10 this time around, given recent changes to CDC guidelines and what was put in place for the women. There is an outside chance the men’s team can to return to play Dec. 17 at Providence.
“Bubbleville” gave us 26 games. It was initially supposed to be 45. The UConn men had a member of the program test positive for COVID-19 a day after returning to Storrs. Who knows where and how that person actually contracted the virus? The incubation period can lead to delays in a positive result. UConn could have entered “Bubbleville” with an infected program member, for all we know.
There are just so many unknowns, all around. So much to hope for. Not much to actually plan on.
UConn announced at 12:18 p.m. Monday that Hurley would hold a virtual press conference at 4 p.m. to discuss the program’s situation. That event was canceled at 3:46 p.m. Hurley is expected to speak Tuesday instead.
In the meantime, the sun set on another day of this 2020 jigsaw puzzle of missing pieces. The season’s lights are flickering. Enjoy whatever you’ve gotten, or what you might get, out of it. We can hope for more, but we can’t expect much and we shouldn’t consume ourselves with what’s next.