NCAA eyes a ‘controlled environment’ for tourneys
Mount St. Mary’s earned its sixth bid to the NCAA Tournament on Tuesday night by beating Bryant in the Northeast Conference Championship game, setting off a postgame celebration that included joy, anticipation, hugs — and COVID-19 testing.
Before the Mountaineers made the 7 ½ -hour bus trip from Smithfield, Rhode Island, back to Emmitsburg, Maryland, they were tested again Wednesday morning.
“Even last night as we were celebrating, we were on the court and I was reminding guys, ‘Hey, put your mask on,’ ” Mount St. Mary’s director of basketball operations Jeremy Freeman said during that long bus ride back. “You don’t want the celebration of a championship to not let you get into Indy.”
The Mountaineers and 67 other teams will be playing in an NCAA Tournament like no other. Instead of the event being scattered throughout arenas from coast to coast, every game will be played in Indiana, all but a handful in Indianapolis, and with attendance sharply limited. A similar arrangement is in place for the women’s tournament in and around San Antonio in South Texas.
A year after the tournament was canceled before it began because of the pandemic, a devastating blow financially and emotionally to everyone involved in college sports, the NCAA is determined to keep the coronavirus from being a bracket buster over three careful, hopeful weeks.
Postponements and rescheduling are not the options they were during the regular season. Duke became a cautionary tale Thursday when it was forced to withdraw from the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament after a positive virus test.
“We said from the beginning that the challenge with the tournament versus the regular season is once you get started, it’s hard to pause,” said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball. “And so the plan is put all the work in on the front end and make sure everybody’s healthy, safe and eligible so the games can go off as scheduled and we can keep the tournament going forward.”
Groundrules: To play 67 games over three weeks in Indiana, the NCAA is taking over four hotels, five arenas, one NFL stadium and an entire convention center. Teams will be mostly shielded from the general public, including friends and family, from the time they get on buses and planes that will take them to Indianapolis until they are either eliminated or win the whole thing on April 5 at Lucas Oil Stadium.
As long as they play they will operate under strict protocols and tight schedules.
Everybody gets a single hotel room. Every team gets its own floor in a hotel and space at the convention center. For guidance, Gavitt said the NCAA turned to professional leagues such as the NBA and NHL, which successfully staged limited site playoffs last year.
Just don’t call it a bubble. “Well, we’ve used the words ‘controlled environment,”’ Gavitt said.
Off the court: Team hotels are connected to the convention center in Indianapolis by skyways that will be closed to the public. Teams will be escorted to the convention center where 12 practice courts have been set up, along with meeting rooms equipped for film sessions. Next week, practices will run from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. and the schedule is rigid. Normally, teams would be permitted to arrange some of their own practices at local high schools or colleges. Not this year.
“So it’s the same for everybody, but there’s not any flexibility in that first week,” Gavitt said.
Players can expect to have video games available in their rooms to fill down time, along with some other swag that will keep them busy “both intellectually and the fun stuff,” Gavitt said.
Players can mix in lobbies and common spaces, but they will be encouraged to do so masked and properly spaced out. Opportunities to get outside as a group, weather permitting, will be coordinated by the NCAA. Teammeals will be held at hotels, with predetermined seating arrangements. If anybody needs a late-night snack, they can order takeout through an NCAA ambassador assigned to each team.
Game time: Once the bracket is released Sunday night, teams will not be reseeded. Replacement teams are a possibility if needed only within 48 hours of the announcement: After 6 p.m. Tuesday, teams that make the field cannot be replaced if a player gets sick. Their opponents simply advances in the bracket, though Gavitt acknowledged Wednesday that as long as a team has five players available, it can play as long as it keeps winning.