BLANK DANCE CARD
Lamenting the tournament we’ll never know as arenas go dark in historic fashion
A Big Ten tournament championship game that would help decide the NCAA Tournament field was televised Sunday afternoon. • Michigan vs. Purdue from 2018. • On another channel, Kansas and Oklahoma State played in a Big 12 quarterfinal from 2006. • That Oregon vs. Arizona clash on ESPN2? It was played on Feb. 22. • This was no ordinary Selection Sunday.
For years, hoops junkies have spent the day in arenas and bars, glued to computers and phones, all to watch the final few automatic bids up for grabs in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Not this season.
Not this Sunday. March Madness became March Sadness after the NCAA made the unprecedented decision to cancel the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments amid concern over the coronavirus outbreak.
Later Sunday night, the 68-team men’s field was supposed to be unveiled in an hour-long CBS special. The time slot was instead filled by the national news.
As a result, college basketball fans were deprived answers to some of the bigge questions this time of year.
Who’s in and who’s out? Too high a seed or too low a seed?
Last four in the field? Last four out of the field?
We won’t get to hear your
school got snubbed.
No live TV looks as a school heard its named called. Or the disappointment when the bubble finally burst.
We won’t get to fill out brackets. Or join the other 18 million in ripping them up after the opening weekend.
“For 350 Division I schools, the most important day is supposed to Selection Sunday,” University of Houston men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson said. “Selection Sunday is ingrained in our culture as (Major League Baseball’s) Opening Day and the Super Bowl. That is our Super Bowl. It’s Masters Sunday on the back nine. If you are a sports guy, you know what Selection Sunday is and that’s been taken away from us.”
Dan Gavitt, the NCAA senior vice president of basketball, said Sunday that despite calls to release tournament brackets, “I don’t believe it’s responsible or fair to do that with incomplete seasons.”
In all, the NCAA said there were 19 men’s and 18 women’s conference tournaments that were not completed. A combined 213 games (132 men, 81 women) that would have helped decide automatic qualifiers were never played.
“All of us want something to fill the void we’re feeling,” Gavitt said in a statement. “However, anything less than a credible process is inconsistent with the tradition of the NCAA basketball championships. Brackets based on hypotheticals can’t substitute for a complete selection, seeding and bracketing process. There will always be an asterisk next to the 2020 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball championships regardless if brackets are released.”
That means we won’t get to see Kansas, the likely No. 1 overall seed and overwhelming favorite, avoid falling victim to another surprising early exit.
We won’t get to watch whether Dayton and national player of the year candidate Obi Toppin could continue their dream season.
We will miss out on a third straight NCAA appearance for UH (but certainly not the last), the best San Diego State team since Kawhi Leonard, and whether Toyota Center — site of the South Regional — would have turned green and gold as Baylor made a possible run to the Final Four.
We won’t get to watch a top seed sweat out an early upset or the inevitable 12-seed knocking off a 5-seed. Or meet the next Cinderella and the “Show Grandmas” — 81-year-old Bette Boucher and 74-year-old Leila McCoy, who sit in the San Diego State student section and were destined to become March Madness darlings.
Rutgers will have to wait another year to play in the tournament, a span that dates back nearly three decades. So will Hofstra, which won the Colonial Athletic Association to snap a 19-year drought. We won’t get to see how many Big Ten teams make the field — ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi had 10 of 11 in his final projections.
We’ll never know if Texas did enough down the stretch to earn a bid and save Shaka Smart’s job, although the latter is to be continued.
Or experience a tournament without Roy Williams and North Carolina.
Some of the biggest stars will not get to play on college basketball’s biggest stage: Toppin, the Kansas duo of Devon Dotson and Udoka Azubuike, Malachi Flynn (San Diego State), Myles Powell (Seton Hall), Jalen Smith (Maryland), Vernon Carey Jr. (Duke), Payton Pritchard (Oregon), Markus Howard (Marquette), Luka Garza (Iowa) and Cassius Winston (Michigan State). Seniors won’t get to take their final bows.
We won’t get to see who delivers the next buzzer-beater to join Christian Laettner, Keith Smart and others in NCAA lore.
We won’t have to relive Lorenzo Charles’ last-second dunk to send underdog North Carolina State over Houston in the 1983 national championship game. Thirty-seven years later, it’s still painful for the Cougars to watch.
We won’t get to see the cutting down of the nets.
“One Shining Moment” has gone silent.