2020-21 College Basketball thread

They really should push this season back to about MLK day.

 

Bunch of chaos today, as Baylor has pulled out of the Empire Classic, to be replaced by ASU, and now URI is going to be in it as well, maybe. That game is on *Wednesday* by the way. URI was originally scheduled to play Stephen F. Austin that day.

 

Maybe if we start the conference tournaments next Monday we can get them in before the whole thing collapses.

 

The Devil made Gardner-Webb do it.

 

Ducks whacked. At least 2 exposures inside the Eastern Washington program.

No. 20 Oregon's opener vs. E. Washington ppd.

Eastern is supposed to be playing in the neighborhood at Wazzou on Saturday. We’ll see.

Utah coach Larry Krystowiak and multiple Utes have tested positive. Utah’s women’s program is also on hold because one of its players tested positive.

Utah coach, multiple players positive for virus

 

19 games on Wednesday have already been canceled

 

Is MLK Day after Easter in 2021?

 

Auburn being proactive in self-imposing postseason ban was smart, but is the punishment acceptable? Gary Parrish

Gaming the system:

"Bruce Pearl's Tigers are replacing five starters from a team that finished 25-6. They were picked seventh in the preseason SEC poll. They are 66th at KenPom. They are 108th at Torvik. Barring a (mild) surprise, they would not have made the 2021 NCAA Tournament anyway. So in this pandemic-shortened season where everything is uncertain and nothing guaranteed, Auburn has banned itself from the postseason with the hope being that when the NCAA finally does formally punish the program, it will get credit for time served."


"This was a difficult decision -- but the right decision," Pearl said in a statement released by the school. "I hate it for our current players. They lost the opportunity for the postseason last year because of COVID, and now they will miss the postseason again. It's a two-year postseason penalty for them. However, we need to take this penalty now to put it behind us."

My translation: "This sucks. But we know we're going to be hit with a postseason ban eventually, so we'd rather get it behind us this season so that we'll be good to go next season when our talented freshmen are sophomores and joined by Jabari Smith, a consensus top-five prospect in the Class of 2021 who is already committed to us but might reconsider if we're ultimately banned from the 2022 NCAA Tournament."

"(By the way, I also don't feel too sorry for the student-athletes currently at Auburn. Each of them enrolled after Person was arrested in September 2017 and charged with federal crimes that promised to create NCAA issues. So if they didn't want to be at risk of someday being banned from the postseason, they probably should've picked a different school. But I digress.)"

 

The biggest problem for basketball going forward isn’t the players or coaches testing positive, it will be the officials.

Lots of travel and almost all have other jobs that put them in close contact with other people. College basketball officiating is, essentially, a well paying hobby that isn’t especially large by design.

So once they start getting sick or going into quarantine, the pool will dwindle and, eventually, you won’t have enough to go around.

 

Agreed. I’m not in the camp that says, “What about the innocent kids punished by ancient indiscretion?” Almost always overblown. The current players almost certainly committed to the program because of something they liked that was sketchy at best. Think Miami football. Players on the penalized teams may not have received Shapiro’s largesse, but they probably heard about it and assumed they’d get theirs one day. And anybody who commits to a program known to be under Level I investigation is making a lousy choice.

 

Leave it to NCAA to find the worst place on the planet for a MBB tournament. LOL

 

Oh, John Higgins is tougher than Covid. John Higgins is smarter than Covid. John Higgins is better-looking than Covid. Covid gets John Higgins shots.