NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 09: Head coach Tommy Amaker of the Harvard Crimson speaks with his team ... [+]
The Ivy League was the first college basketball conference to cancel its conference tournament in March, paving the way for every other conference to do the same and, ultimately, for the NCAA tournament to be canceled for the first time ever.
Now the 2020-21 Ivy League basketball season is in jeopardy because Harvard—and possibly other teams—is not expected to play this season amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since canceling fall sports and saying no winter sports would begin until at least January 1, the league has not made any official statement on the upcoming winter season. The NESCAC—which includes top academic schools like Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst, as well as Colby—canceled winter sports earlier this month.
The NCAA Division 1 season will begin November 25, with many leagues planning a few weeks of non-conference play before league play begins in mid-December.
Many of the Ivy League’s coaches remain optimistic a basketball season can happen, but multiple league sources said Harvard is not expected to play this year.
One source said that if he were betting, he’d bet against Harvard playing this year. The school is not planning to have students back in the spring, so there’s “no chance” Harvard would play, the source said.
“There is zero chance Harvard is playing this year,” a second source said.
Harvard coach Tommy Amaker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Harvard currently has three players in the NCAA transfer portal—senior forward Danilo Djuricic, senior guard Reed Farley and senior guard Mario Haskett—with sources saying the players are looking to grad-transfer next fall. The Ivy League has long had a rule that prevents postgraduate players from playing sports, and last year 12 players transferred out, including nine who were granted immediate eligibility. Several grad-transferred to high-profile basketball programs like Duke, Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama and Seton Hall, where they are immediately eligible this season.
It’s unclear if other high-profile Ivy League programs, such as Yale and Princeton, will play this season.
On Monday, 6-foot-10 junior Paul Atkinson, the Ivy League Co-Player of the Year from Yale, announced he would graduate in the spring and transfer. Atkinson averaged 17.6 points and 7.3 rebounds last season and will be in high demand on the transfer market.
A source said several returning members of the Yale basketball team took jobs or internships off campus during the first semester but are “ready to enroll” if the season begins in January.
Meantime, the Yale men’s hockey team just had a coronavirus outbreak that impacted 18 players.
“All other members of the men’s ice hockey team who are in the New Haven area, as well as the Athletics staff who have worked directly with them, have been instructed to quarantine and to participate in the university testing program, whether or not they have been identified as close contacts of infected team members,” Stephanie Spangler, vice provost for health affairs and academic integrity, said in a letter to the Yale community Thursday evening, per CNN.
Whether the league would operate a season with fewer than the full eight teams remains uncertain, but multiple sources said it could go forward with five or six teams.
“It’s a matter of the league having enough teams,” one league source said. “We’ll have a semblance of a league. I have heard Harvard is out. I think if we can have five teams play, that’s what we’ll do.”
Another source said: “I have a feeling it would be the whole league isn’t going to play. It would take a really unique situation for one team to not play.”
Several league sources said they expect a formal announcement from the Ivy League on its plans sometime in November or December.
“There has been no decision made past the end of the fall term,” Ivy League spokeswoman Meghan Moore said Monday in an email. “The league’s presidents and athletics directors continue to meet on a regular basis to discuss various options for the return to competition for our fall, winter and spring student-athletes in 2021.”
This post has been updated.
