All a team has to play in this year’s NCAA tournament is five healthy players. How about a coach? The NCAA will answer you about it.
The fluid nature of a March Madness that was played amid the coronavirus pandemic was explained on Wednesday, hours before the NCAA selection committee began meeting to remove a 68-team break that could keep -move on until the games are over next week.
Explaining a number of contingencies that could come into play if teams were exposed to COVID-19, NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt said that as long as a team has five healthy players, it’s good to go. hi. What if the technical body of this team is decimated by the coronavirus?
“Honestly, it’s probably something we should talk about as a committee,” he said.
For months, the NCAA has established protocols to make sure the tournament runs in a somewhat normal way. The most important change is that all 68 teams will go down to Indianapolis next week and all games will be played in and around the city for 19 days.
Players will have their own rooms and teams will have their own floors in designated hotels throughout their stay in Indiana. Players and coaches will be subject to frequent virus testing and contact tracking. To increase this effort, when they are in practice and in games, players will carry devices that track their location and can keep track of the people they have been with, useful if one of those close contacts is positive.
Two weeks ago, the NCAA released its policy on how and when teams making the tournament can be replaced if the virus hits them. The bracket comes out during the usual revelation, Sunday evening. After 6pm on Tuesday, the teams making the field will not be able to be replaced if they get sick and their scheduled opponents would simply go to the break.
But Gavitt acknowledged that as long as a team has five players, it can always stay winning.
“We decided if they had five eligible, healthy players,” they could play, he said. “We struggled with contingencies and thought it was fairer for a team to win the way, that even if it was compromised, they should have a chance to play instead of being replaced.”
The task of building the support has also been greatly altered by the pandemic. Committee chairman Mitch Barnhart, Kentucky’s athletic director, said he was excited that all but six of the ranked teams have played at least 20 games this season. But he acknowledged that teams ’seasons have been“ normal ”.
Just one example: Michigan enters the Big Ten tournament as the regular season champion despite having fewer wins than an Illinois team that played more games. Michigan did not play for a 22-day stretch in January and February.
“We’re looking at player availability,” Barnhart said. “We’re seeing who has played and lost games. We put another component on our follow-up sheet to take this unique circumstance into account.”
Despite all the uncertainty, Gonzaga, undefeated, secured the top spot with BYU’s victory in the West Coast conference final on Tuesday night.
Michigan, Baylor and Illinois appear to have the inside track at the other No. 1 seed, while Duke and Kentucky top a longer list of the usual blue-blooded programs that struggled and need to win their conference tournaments this week for become March Madness.