March Madness leads to life on lockdown
Today’s puzzle solutions can be found on the TV page.
Tracy Byrd with special guest Ray Scott Cedartown Performing Arts Center
April 8, 7:30 p.m.
INDIANAPOLIS — At Victory Field in downtown Indianapolis on Wednesday, a couple of coaches running laps around the warning track passed different diversions scattered across the minor league ballpark.
In one section, a badminton net. In others, a soccer ball and a football. No sign of a basketball.
When the 1,500 or so players, coaches and staff members in town for the NCAA Tournament want to get a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of some green grass, this is their option. Their only option.
This is life at a basketball tournament being played in a pandemic. The unspoken message: If they came to Indianapolis hoping for fun and games, they are not in the right place — at least not until tip-off.
“I’m in a bed for, like, 15 hours a day,” Iowa swingman Connor Mccaffery said in describing his new, austere routine in Indy.
It is, quite simply, how things have to be over the next three weeks. Starting Thursday, in an attempt to get through 67 games uninterrupted, the NCAA has placed players, coaches and staff under a virtual lock and key. They don’t like calling it a bubble, but semantics aside, there is no straying between the team hotels, the adjacent convention center for practice, meetings and 30-minute windows in the weight room, and Victory Field, home of the Triple A Indianapolis Indians.
“We’ve been playing a lot of Spades,” Alabama forward Herb Jones said.
The Tar Heels might consider themselves lucky. They’re among the few teams not playing their first games in Indianapolis. Instead, North Carolina will face Wisconsin at Purdue’s home court, 70 miles away. It means the Heels get to practice there, too.
“Today, the monotony is really going to be broken up,” coach Roy Williams said. “We’re going to have two and a half hours in the bus . ... It hasn’t exactly been Maui.”
Or Spokane. Or Omaha. Or Raleigh.
Normally, on the Wednesday before the start of the tournament, parking lots at arenas in cities such as those would be open, with music playing, hot dog vendors working and fans in face paint streaming in to take advantage of free admission to team shootarounds. Certainly not much to see there in the way of real basketball, but the band plays, the cheerleaders cheer and everyone gets pumped for the next day’s action.
This year, bands, mascots and cheerleaders are staying at home (at least through the Elite 8), because teams are restricted to 34 members for their travel squads. On Wednesday, the four arenas in Indianapolis (and the ones in West Lafayette and Bloomington) were mainly empty, save for the occasional delivery truck or work crew heading in through a service entrance.
Illinois Street, which cuts through the heart of downtown in front of the convention center, was a veritable speedway, with nothing more than typical lunchtime traffic passing the Ncaa-sanctioned hotels.
“We have no reservations at all about the plan here to give the student-athletes the opportunity to play the games successfully,” NCAA vice president Dan Gavitt said. “We’re very confident the student-athletes, coaches and teams want that environment to have the best chance to play these games.”
None of the 68 teams notified the NCAA they would have to withdraw by Tuesday night’s deadline. Gavitt said it also was encouraging that, of the 6,900 coronavirus tests analyzed so far, only seven have come back with positive results. He said players from Virginia, the only team of the 68 not yet in Indianapolis because of a COVID-19 outbreak last week, would need to clear three tests after arriving in Indy on Friday afternoon to be approved to play Ohio on Saturday night.
Gavitt also clarified circumstances surrounding the six referees who were sent home this week — one who tested positive and five who were out with him to dinner. It’s true, Gavitt said, that they had not checked into their hotel when they went out and, so, were not officially in the NCAA protocol.
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org. 37 Windflower 40 Glutted 42 Broad-antlered
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stake 54 Smoked
salmon 55 Delight 56 Chop — 57 Actress Lupino 58 Skippers’ OKS 59 Bonn
connector 60 Jones of fiction
DOWN
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7 Pipes down 8 Scandinavian city
9 Trotsky’s first name 10 Remnant 12 “Wild Bill” 18 Startled cries 19 Sandbox
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