Duke drew line in sand amid virus

Unwillingness to play prompted ACC to finally call off tournament

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Finally, belatedly, Vincent Price was the adult in the room.

The Duke president was the only one who would put his foot down and say “no.” That proceeding with the ACC tournament was the wrong move. That going ahead even as the Big Ten and the Big 12 and the SEC and the Pac-12 and Conference USA and the WAC canceled the rest of their tournaments was not only unwise but unfathomable.

When Price said Duke wouldn’t come to the arena for its 3 p.m. game Thursday against N.C. State because the university was shutting down all athletic competition, it was the decision the commissioner and the other 14 presidents and the governor all refused to make.

That’s what changed between 9:30 a.m. Thursday, when ACC commissioner John Swofford went on the ACC Network and insisted the tournament would go on in an empty building, and 12:02 p.m., when Florida State was pulled off the floor amid a barrage of cancellations from other conferences that piled one on top of each other.

Price didn’t even know that when he called Swofford, emerging from consultations with his Board of Trustees with the decision already made. He just knew, as the president of a major research university with a health system girding for what could be a massive blow, it was the right thing to do.

Price told the News & Observer the opportunity to set the right example for public health weighed heavily on his decision.

“Without question,” Price said. “I’m very proud of Duke athletics. They are an important part of life at Duke. But public health is our primary concern. The athletic community has the opportunity to make a statement how important for all of us it is to practice social distancing. It’s the smart thing to do.”

And with Duke athletic director Kevin White the chairman of the NCAA basketball committee, it was only a matter of time before the NCAA tournament was canceled as well — an announcement that came not long after the ACC went dark.

It had to be done. Just as it was against the advice of epidemiologists to play any sporting event in front of a crowd, once NBA players started testing positive for the novel coronavirus, the games had to stop. All of them.

So Price jolted the ACC into action. Traditionally, the ACC has made every decision by consensus. It moves slowly, deliberately. That’s how Swofford ended up musing Thursday morning that if an ACC player or official did turn out to test positive, playing the games would have been the wrong decision. It probably always was.

The reality is: We don’t know. No one knows. But in the face of that uncertainty, the worst-case scenario isn’t that everyone overreacted. It’s hundreds of thousands dead because no one was willing to act in time.

“For the foreseeable future, there is a new normal in our lives,” Gen. Martin Dempsey tweeted Thursday, perhaps not coincidentally a close friend of Mike Krzyzewski. “The courageous decisions will be those that acknowledge we may have to accept personal inconveniences for the common good.”

So for the first time in the history of the ACC, the regular-season champion, and not the tournament champion, is the actual champion. Florida State was presented the trophy at midcourt in a mostly empty building, a surreal conclusion to a surreal 48 hours that might seem like a beach vacation by the end of the month.

Price’s decision cost Duke a chance at the ACC title and potentially an NCAA title if that tournament actually had been played. It was not without cost or risk. (Certainly, Krzyzewski had to be on board, at the least.) But he finally stepped into the breach when no one else would.