Big fan of the transparency in this decision. Breath of fresh air compared to the football disaster. Gave us a *rough date and told us what would be decided at that time.
Of note, the NCAA has a lot of control over college basketball and basically no control over college football.
NCAA will do every thing that it can to make sure there’s an NCAA Tournament. As “imperfect” as it might be.
My prediction is they put all 64 teams in some kind of “mega bubble” in Indianapolis and play the thing out.
Do you mean after some type of regular season whatever it may be?
Yes, I think each conference will have to have a plan to try safely play some games. If a team gets infected and has to miss games that’ll just be another level added to what will be the hardest job any selection committee will ever have to do.
Basketball, as the NBA is showing, at least has a shot at this. It will require the NCAA to basically admit that these kids are employees of the university and not just students, but we all knew that anyway.
I think you could bubble conferences for a shortened season, pick a tournament field, assign the field to 4 bubbles (leaving gaps for isolation between them), and play it out.
The biggest concern is the length of time you’re willing to bubble them.
Remember the student athletes still will have class requirements whether in person or on line!
If a bubble is done for any length of time, players would be able to still do their classes online.
Just a guess, but unless COVID news gets worse over the next couple weeks, I think the NCAA will move basketball start date up to around Nov 1. Try to encourage teams/conferences to schedule more earlier dates and leave flexibility later in the year in case games need to be made up.