College basketball season will look very different
In reality, the NCAA's cap of 27 regular season games for this college basketball season is only a very modest reduction from the norm, and its Nov. 25 tip-off marks a delay of only a few weeks.
That said, this season — as with most everything else due to the pandemic — will be distinctly abnormal.
Earlier this week, the NCAA announced its plans for the college basketball season, but really, the picture laid out was merely a framework, limited to just the start date and the parameters for the length of the season — no more than those 27 regular season games and no fewer than 13.
Now, all the blanks must be filled in, as the schedule is essentially torn up.
The NCAA recommended that schools play at least four out-of-conference competitions before their league seasons, and the likely scenario in the Big Ten is for that to be the case, for the conference to carry on with a standard 20-game regular season to be preceded by a limited non-conference slate that could still involve marquee events like the Big Ten/ACC Challenge and Gavitt Games, and perhaps the Cancun Challenge (in Florida).
Neutral-site bubble formats have been conceived and could come into play for schools like Purdue, one reported site being the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. Louisville has already announced it will host a bubble and has solicited interest from schools who may want to participate. Duke is reportedly working toward hosting a bubble also.
It remains to be seen, and as Boilermaker coach Matt Painter said, circumstance may shape the schedule, whether it be preseason events' ability to occur or restrictions that may come into play based on the location of a game or event.
"Some of it can get determined for you," Painter said. "If somebody's not going to play, doesn't want to play or can't play. Schools across the country, there's a lot of similarities in their protocols, but there are different restrictions across the board."
Friday morning, Painter held a media session to discuss the season, not knowing yet what that season will even look like.
"I'd like to play all our whole schedule," Painter said, "but you can't do that. It's just trying to get in as many quality games as you can get in while keeping everything above board in terms of health and safety and testing."
It's obviously very possible there could be turbulence from game to game, week to week, month to month, as daily testing ramps up. The Big Ten's newly implemented protocol for football calls for a 21-day removal from competition for those who test positive, in part to safeguard against concerns over cardiac issues. The protocols will almost certainly be consistent with basketball.
"If one guy steps out for three weeks, and that's your best guy and you've got to play six games over that three weeks, boy, that's gonna be tough and that's a bad break. But if you're a team that has a chance to win the league and you're facing someone else who does, too, and you're playing that team at that time, boy, you just got a break. You're going to see a lot of those scenarios.
"And I think, in my opinion, you're going to see some teams have to quarantine themselves and miss a few weeks. That's probably bound to happen. Unless we can get a vaccine, or we can really get fool-proof here with testing, but the one thing we can lose in this is you still have to stick to the protocol. Just because the daily testing comes into play, you still have to act a certain way."
Painter compared college basketball's looming season to that of Major League Baseball, which has carried on its season despite a litany of cancelations, postponements and whatnot, due to COVID-19 infections and the contact tracing that's come with them. There will be an imbalance between the number of games each team has played, which could affect the standings in some way, ultimately.
"We're just going to have to keep going," Painter said. "It may not be fair across the board."
One bit of normalcy in all this could come during the postseason.
Ensuring an NCAA Tournament after last year's cancelation has been of paramount importance, and barring anything catastrophic, it'll happen.
It may even look traditional, a 68-team field. A proposal from ACC coaches pushing for every Division I program to be included has been dashed, due to television's disinterest in such a setup as much as anything, and NCAA officials have come out against expanding the tournament.
"It looks like we're going in the same direction and will have it as normal," Painter said.
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