Virus casts shadow as the season nears
All but locked in his apartment for a week during a COVID-related isolation period this fall, Cal standout Matt Bradley said he rode his bike through the Berkeley Hills “around nobody” in order to preserve his sanity.
Across the bay, Stanford players had been moving back inside after trying to run basketball drills on outdoor tennis courts in the late summer. “Our serve and volley game is on point,” Cardinal coach Jerod Haase said jokingly.
In Salt Lake City, forward Timmy Allen said the Utes are “basically in quarantine 24/7” and, in Los Angeles, USC coach Andy Enfield still worries about what’s under the bed as the Pac-12 basketball season approaches.
“I sit around sometimes late at night, and wake up in the middle of the night, thinking, ‘Well, what happens if one person gets it?’” Enfield said. “Does that mean we’re done as a program for 14 days?”
If Pac-12 football teams are any indication, maybe so. Thursday, UCLA was picked to win the league in the conference’s preseason media poll, but the order of finish might really be COVID-19 first, then the Bruins, ASU, Oregon, Stanford and Arizona.
Or, maybe the final standings will feature a strictly inverse relationship to positive tests and/or contact tracing: The more you have of those, the worse you do on the court.
“There’s gonna be some advantages,” Cal coach Mark Fox said. “There already are with people that were able to train all summer having an advantage over those of us who did not. You would also have an advantage (if you) already had a significant outbreak on your team.
“So I think it will have a significant impact on how the race goes, how everybody plays. I just pray that we can all stay healthy.”
Fox’s words at Thursday’s Pac-12 media day carried some extra weight because the Golden Bears might be sitting in the most health-restricted area within the league’s footprint.
They weren’t able to do anything during the summer other than lift weights and do limited drills under outdoor tents — and after holding just six regular indoor practices this fall, they were shut down for the next five days when a player tested positive.
Fox’s football counterpart, Justin Wilcox, hasn’t been able to offer a whole lot of encouragement, either. The Bears have yet to play a football game, with their game Saturday at ASU morphing into a Sunday game at UCLA after the ASU-Cal and UCLAUtah games were canceled this week.
“All offseason, he kept saying, ‘You’re going to play a game before I do,’” Fox said. “So we made a lunch wager on it and I thought I was going to win until the last 10 days.”
Then again, if the Bears are able to play a basketball game anytime soon, they might not be ready thanks in part to their shutdown.
“It wasn’t a lot of fun, to be honest,” Fox said. “Nobody had the spring in college basketball, most teams had the fall, and we didn’t really have anything that was normal. The stoppage was a challenge.
“We’re not playing particularly well because we’re just behind.”
And that’s just the basketball aspect of it. Bradley said the mental part was also a challenge.
“Thank God for technology,” Bradley said. “It’s not as good as physical interaction. I was able to go outside with nobody around and just kind of move around, get some fresh air. But overall I stayed in my room and connected with people over social media and I was riding my bike.”
Arizona hasn’t reported a significant COVID-related issue so far this fall, though several Wildcats described challenges in their daily routines during the team’s annual media day last week, including having to get up at 6 a.m. in order to get a daily antigen test.
“Getting used to COVID (protocols) is a little adjustment but after a while, it’s just part of being a student athlete,” sophomore forward Jordan Brown said. It’s “getting up early, working out and just being careful on what you do. It just feels like you’re getting ready to be a pro, really.”
Allen, a product of Mesa’s Red Mountain High School, said the rise in coronavirus cases in Utah has the Utes even more vigilant about what they have to do, staying in small groups, wearing a facemask everywhere they go and generally keeping a low profile.
“We can’t do much outside of basketball and schoolwork,” Allen said. “It’ll be interesting to see who can continue to lock in on this throughout the country and continue to be safe.”
Already, as with Cal players, the Utes have seen the worst of what can happen by looking at the football field. The Utes’ football game at UCLA was canceled Friday, after they bowed out of their scheduled opener with Arizona last week.
Utah basketball coach Larry Krystkowiak said he felt badly for them, saying it’s “really hard” to keep all 80 to 100 players in a football program safe.
Krystkowiak said he’s comfortable with the smaller numbers of players.