How a game came together in days
Panthers scramble to find opponent
College basketball coaches like Pitt’s Jeff Capel and Northern Illinois’ Mark Montgomery are used to adjusting on the fly, watching as their best-coordinated plans are shattered in an instant and leaving them to make something of the scattered pieces that remain.
Nothing, though, could have prepared them for what has transpired over the past several months in their sport.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the 2020-21 college basketball season unlike one that has ever preceded it. Games have been postponed or outright canceled within hours of tipping off. Considerations that were once trivial for some programs are now omnipresent and all-important. And, as both coaches recently witnessed, a game can be added to a schedule mere days before it is set to take place.
On Tuesday, it was announced that Capel and Montgomery’s teams would play Saturday at Petersen Events Center, only about 98 hours after the news was made official.
Even in college basketball — which doesn’t have some of the same scheduling absurdities college football does, like matchups being set 10 years (or more) in advance — it’s an unusual arrangement born from unusual circumstances in a most unusual season.
“A lot of things happen in three days,” Montgomery said, with a chuckle.
The compressed timeline makes Saturday’s matchup something more than a nondescript early December matchup between an ACC program and a Mid-American Conference opponent it paid undisclosed thousands to make the trip (a copy of the game contract from Northern Illinois requested by the Post-Gazette had not been received at the time of the story’s publication).
The game and the process that led to it are symbolic of college basketball in 2020 and the scheduling difficulties that come with it.
For weeks, Pitt had been searching for a fifth and final non-conference opponent, with contests against Northwestern, Saint Francis, Drexel and Gardner-Webb already inked. It couldn’t just be anybody at
any time, either. With ACC play beginning Dec. 16 and with games already lined up for Dec. 9 and 12, the weekend of Dec. 5 existed as a logical opening, especially as final exams at Pitt have ended. The Panthers would need not only a team with the same vacancy and a desire to play, but also one with adequately robust testing protocols.
“It’s a challenge out there,” Capel said. “Everyone’s kind of scrambling and trying to look.”
About 510 miles away, Northern Illinois was dealing with a similar predicament.
For budgetary and safety purposes, Montgomery, as he often does, tried to arrange a primarily regional schedule. The Huskies had games against Illinois-Chicago, SIU Edwardsville, Iowa, Chicago State and DePaul, all within state boundaries or a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride. Their game Thursday against DePaul, however, was postponed Monday as the Blue Demons needed time to regain their physical conditioning after a COVID
-prompted pause in team activities.
Suddenly, they had an opening and a question of whether or not to fill it.
“Everything is always changing,” Montgomery said. “You think you’ve got this thing figured out and then it changes and switches again.”
Before DePaul’s postponement was announced, a candidate had already emerged for Northern Illinois. Montgomery said the program received an email Sunday night from Pitt, which it responded to Monday. After administrators were consulted and protocols were confirmed — Northern Illinois tests three to four times a week, Montgomery said — a contract was finalized.
In a pressurized situation in which time was a precious resource, familiarity helped. The two teams played last season, a 59-50 Pitt victory at Petersen Events Center, providing at least some connection between the programs. Capel said the Panthers were in communication with “about three teams” about possibly playing before settling on the Huskies.
“I had a chance to watch them and just figured with where we are right now that that was the best opportunity for us,” Capel said.
Odd as such a rushed agreement would be in a normal season, this season is, well, anything but normal. Capel said he received a text Tuesday morning from a Power Five coach asking if Pitt would be willing to play a road game against his team Thursday, making the time between the signing of the game contract and the game itself for Pitt-Northern Illinois feel like an eternity.
Since the season began on Nov. 25, 107 games involving Division I teams have been canceled and an additional 45 games have been postponed. Such logistical headaches have been felt locally. Duquesne’s game Friday against Winthrop was canceled after two positive cases within the program emerged. Robert Morris’ Nov. 25 game against Point Park was delayed due to positive coronavirus tests and will now take place Saturday.
Even if a game is scheduled to be played, concerns and anxieties don’t suddenly disappear, something Northern Illinois knows well. The Huskies will be taking a chartered flight to Pittsburgh that is set to land at 1:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. tip. The team will go directly from the airport to the arena, a break from the non-COVID routine of arriving the day before a game and staying in a hotel. Once the game is over, players will shower, board the bus and head to the airport for their flight home.
Montgomery and his team will be in Pittsburgh for a shorter period of time than it took to coordinate the game for which they’re traveling — but just barely.
“It’s a pandemic,” Montgomery said. “You don’t have to go to a hotel, you don’t have to deal with different restaurants and you don’t have to deal with those other dynamics you don’t want to deal with right now. Staying safe and healthy is the best way to do it.”