After ESPN on Monday announced the cancellation of all of its non-conference college basketball events in Orlando, Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard arrived at practice to find his team wondering if the entire college basketball season was finished due to COVID-19.
The Pirates, picked fifth in the Big East Conference Wednesday, were slated to play UCLA and then either Boise State or Kansas in the Orlando Invitational in late November.
“We had our MTE [Multi-team event] canceled the other day and I came to practice and 12 of my kids were like, ‘Why are we practicing? The same thing is going to happen, the season is going to be canceled,’” Willard relayed Wednesday during Big East Media Day, which was held virtually.
“I’m like, 'Guys, we talked about this for three months. We’re just going to have to go with the flow.”
Going with the flow is the name of the game for sports at all levels these days, including college basketball, which saw conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament canceled in March and is now slated to begin a new season Nov. 25.
Due to the cancellation of the Orlando events, Seton Hall still doesn’t know when, or where, its season will begin — and it remains unclear if the season will be completed.
“I wouldn’t even use disaster right now, it’s too light a term,” Willard said of planning his non-conference schedule. “It’s just a total s**tshow.”
Marquette has currently paused basketball activities for 14 days due to a positive test, and Villanova previously did so per NCAA recommendations. Amid all of this, Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman said “it’s a possibility” that the league would construct bubbles for the latter portion of the season. The league announced a preliminary schedule for December where each team will play 4-5 on-campus games, and the rest of the schedule will be announced at a later date.
“It’s probably going to be almost impossible [to complete a season with a 14-day quarantine period],” Willard said. “It just doesn’t make sense to me, if we’re going to test so much, why we’re not using the tests to keep moving forward.”
Speaking about Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski, Willard said: “Wojo just had one kid test [positive] so now he’s going to quarantine for 14 days. You’re going to need four days to get your team back and then you’re still going to be testing. What happens when somebody else tests positive? Now you’re down for another 14 days.”
Kentucky coach John Calipari said this week his team would shut down for 14 days if anyone on his team tested positive.
“You’d have no choice. We don’t run this, the virus runs us,” Calipari said Monday.
Seton Hall currently tests its athletes weekly and will move to three times a week before the season starts.
As of Saturday, as NJ Advance Media reported, 27 students at the university have tested positive this month, the vast majority of the 37 cases the university has reported since its July 9 fall reopening and 44 since the start of the pandemic. Two employees also have tested positive.
Willard said his team has been training since July 20 and still hasn’t had a positive test.
“We’re always worried about it, we always try to stay in our room and stick together, but nobody’s safe nowadays,” said senior forward Sandro Mamukelashvili, an All-Big East First-Team selection. “You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and just get it, so of course we’re nervous and scared but it didn’t touch us. If it will, it will suck but it’s a protocol we have to follow and hopefully we’ll stay healthy.”
Ackerman said there is talk within NCAA about minimizing 14-day quarantine guideline to 10 days, but Willard would like to see the process somehow sped up by testing.
“We’re testing every two days so we’re going to know exactly where someone got it, when someone got it,” Willard said. "We can isolate that person. You could test the next two days and you could tell if he was able to spread it or if anyone else has it so I think moving forward people really have to look at this and we have to use the fact that we’re testing so much to our advantage. and I think that’s the direction we’re going to have to move.
“Football did it, baseball did it, hockey did it, sports are doing it right now in other leagues,” Willard added. “I think for basketball we just have to be a little bit more aggressive to use the tests to our advantage. If we’re going to test as much as we’re testing, we need to use the history of the tests to keep moving forward.”
Villanova coach Jay Wright, whose team has won two of the last four NCAA titles, said college basketball needs a uniform standard for testing. The Orlando event was canceled in part because the SEC and Big 12 would not agree to having its players tested again 90 days after a positive test.
“If the NCAA is going to put guidelines out, you should have a way that you can mandate it and make sure that everyone does it,” Wright said." That’s a problem, I think. That’s going to be a problem ... You’ve already got two conferences that are not going by the guidelines."
Willard and Wright both agreed that moving toward a bubble, or multiple bubbles, the way the NBA and WNBA did, could be the way to go, especially in January and February after students return to campus.
“They better have a lot of wine,” Willard joked about bubbles. “I think a bubble’s possible. They could probably do it. It’s probably more feasible towards February when you start getting all the other sports and students back on campus, but for right now we’re going to be the only ones on campus for almost two months so we have to take advantage of that time. I think as you get towards February, I think a bubble could definitely be an option.”
Still, he said bubbles can have an adverse effect on the mental health of players.
“Not enough people have talked about the mental health of our players,” he said.
Wright said college basketball might have to move towards bubbles for conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament. As of now, the Big East Tournament is slated for March 10-13 at Madison Square Garden, but it remains unclear if the Garden will be open or will be able to host fans.
“There’s no doubt the bubble is the answer,” Wright said. “If you want to ensure that you’re going to get all your games in, the bubble’s the answer. All the medical experts will agree to that. The challenge for us in college athletics, specifically college basketball, is our players are students, they’re not employees. So to force someone to go into a bubble is shaky, and No. 2 if you do it for the men, you have to do it for the women, which doubles the cost for everybody.”
UConn coach Dan Hurley, the former Seton Hall player and Rutgers assistant coach, said he’s concerned a bubble could be “unhealthy” for players.
“Do a little mini-bubble with rapid testing every couple of weeks where you bring four teams in and try to knock out three games in four days,” he said. “Going in for a month to play a bunch of games to me could become a very unhealthy environment.”
Willard said his players just want to get the season started. How long it lasts remains unclear.
“It’s tough because these guys are all mentally ready to play this season,” Willard said. “They’re excited to play. They want to play against someone besides themselves, but we have to figure out a way to do it. And I think there are ways to do it, we just have to do it safely.”
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Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.