Well, we made it this far. The NCAA Tournament is now in front of us, and the overriding goal of this season was to get this far and get the tournament played. The big question now is if it can be played without a disruption thanks to the virus.
It’s a question whose answer is less clear and has less optimism for the best answer than just a few days earlier.
To be sure, there is reason to believe that we are heading towards or even rounding third base on this virus. The vaccine is being administered, cases and deaths are dropping, and more places are starting to loosen restrictions or open up as a result. We are not where we were a year ago around this time. But this has not abated entirely, and recent days has shown just that.
After the cancellation of last season’s NCAA Tournament and the accompanying reduced payouts to schools, there was never a question that holding this year’s tournament was paramount. The reduced payouts significantly impacted finances at a number of schools, leading to sports being cut, massive pay cuts and open questions about the future of school programs, conferences and entire sports. Another year of that would be beyond disastrous.
This season was bound to be unique, and it certainly has been. A number of schools had long pauses, with very few never having to do that at all, and conference tournament results were the most recent piece of evidence that this was a little different season. Normally, plenty of regular season champions don’t win their conference tournaments, but this season it went to a whole new level, with a few championship games involving two lower seeds. Rarely did we see 1 vs. 2 in such games.
It didn’t help that regular season conference schedules were, on the whole, even more unbalanced than usual, which made it more of a chore to determine a regular season champion and subsequently seed teams for the conference tournaments. Just look at the MAAC, where Iona was the No. 9 seed due to the Gaels having long pauses and thus not being able to play many games; they tied for the second-best record. You can also look at the Big Ten for a different variety of this, where Michigan was deemed the regular season champion but Illinois has a different view since they won two more conference games.
But while regular season impacts of the virus were noteworthy and the subject of many a store, conference tournaments were hardly immune to it. The effects, however, were a little different, as teams unable to compete due to positive tests were eliminated via uncontested games. We saw this in a few cases, notably with Duke and Virginia each being eliminated in the ACC Tournament and Kansas in the Big 12. Even in the women’s game, we saw Missouri State pull out of the Missouri Valley Tournament as a precaution to the NCAA Tournament, which they were expected to be in regardless. They were slated to play a team that had positive tests but had enough players available to compete.
Virginia and Kansas were selected to the 68-team field. They certainly hope to compete, and we should hope they are able to. But once the tournament begins, any game where a team is unable to compete due to positive tests and contact tracing will be uncontested, with that team being eliminated. That is not desired at all, not only because we should want every game to be played so we can experience something resembling the quintessential March Madness experience, but also because it would not be a good sign.
The NCAA won’t have a bubble in Indiana, but it will have a heavily regulated setup in hopes of making it through the next few weeks to get 67 more games in. There is a lot of reason for optimism, and certainly more than there was at the beginning of the season, but recent days provided a reminder that we are not out of the woods yet.
Enjoy the NCAA Tournament, and pray for the best when it comes to no team having to withdraw due to the virus.