NCAA President Mark Emmert supported the idea of potential use of bubbles for NCAA championships – including basketball – in the first half of 2021, and said Thursday night that it is “perfectly viable in many sports.”
“Starting with 64 teams is difficult. Twenty-two, OK, maybe that’s a masterful number. Sixteen, sure to manage. But you have to figure out the logistics,” Emmert said in an interview on the NCAA website. “There are undoubtedly ways to make that work.”
Emmert said Joni Comstock, senior vice president of the NCAA Championships, and Dan Gavitt, senior vice president of basketball, have teamed up with committees and conferences to figure out how logistics and economics would work. amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s obviously expensive to do that,” he said. “But we will not hold a championship in a way that endangers student-athletes.
“If we have to do a bubble model and that’s the only way we can do it, then we’ll figure it out.”
Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari supported the concept, saying on Thursday his edition of The Intersection on ESPN Radio that a “well thought out” bubble concept is realistic for college basketball because of what the NBA and WNBA have achieved. He said the leaders of college basketball should “listen to the science, listen to the doctors”, but he believes that the blueprint has already been established.
“The thing that has happened to all of us in basketball is the NBA and the WNBA have shown a way for us to have a season,” he said, referring to the bubbles that leagues use in Florida. “The one thing each [college] campus seems to do is to say that after Thanksgiving there will be no people on campus, so it probably opens a door to Thanksgiving that even if we do not have fans that there will be a safe campus based on your team being there yourself. “
He added that Kentucky has already made a bubble, with players participating in their own training facility, working out in their own weight room and living in a private dorm, which has its own chef. That model can be translated across the country, Calipari said, because basketball teams have fewer players than football programs.
Like Emmert, Calipari said that while the NCAA tournament could come out in a bubble, it would be difficult to have a traditional field of 68 teams.
“Instead of it being week after week long, maybe it’s short. You lose, you’re out of the bubble. You go home,” he said.
While Emmert acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic would eventually dictate the scheme for winter and spring sports, as well as the fall sports that were postponed until the spring, he said he would prefer the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments to be held as planned, beginning in March and ending in early April.
“Basketball for men and women, we have to do what we have to do to support those athletes and those timelines,” Emmert said. “We talk, of course, with our media partners fairly constantly now about what flexibility they will have and we should have. We keep nothing more than keeping the current dates constant, and that can do well …. We hope we do that. can do, but we’re looking for alternatives. Move backwards if we have to – where can we pack that? “
Emmert announced Thursday that there would be no falling NCAA championships due to the number of participating teams falling below each 50% threshold in each sport. But he was optimistic about having champions in 2021.
“This is mostly logistics and health care and media time. These are not insurmountable issues,” he said. “They are hard, but they are not insurmountable.”
Several college basketball officials spoke to ESPN about the importance of COVID-19 testing in being able to have a basketball season for men and women, and Emmert discussed how he hopes for an improvement in that department by December and January.
“I’m actually pretty optimistic considering all the brainpower and energy, and honestly, money being put into the test problem in the private and public sectors, that we’re months away … from much higher quality antigen tests – what the reliability of it is – much greater availability of those tests, and at a cheaper price point, “he said. “And if we can get there, then, if we move to winter, we can do many, many more tests. We can do it often. We can do it every day in a perfect world, and it’s turned on in 15 minutes. instead of 15 days. “
Calipari seems to believe that the leaders of college basketball are ready to unveil a plan and prevent the chaos in the build-up to keep sports around the country from falling.
“I think basketball will be a little different because it will be clear when it’s time for us,” he said. “I have not been to any of the football meetings to talk about it. … But I think it will become a little clearer for basketball. The thing for all of us is that there is a path.”
The 2020 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament was canceled on March 12, marking the first time since it began in 1939 that no men’s champion was crowned. It was the first time no women’s basketball champion had been decided since 1982, when the NCAA women’s basketball tournament began.
Information from ESPN’s Myron Medcalf was used in this report.
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