Fair point on extra staff. I’m certainly aware of the official statement…I’m personally unsure what “injury-prevention activities and sports-specific training” means exactly but I’m guessing it’s not “actual practice”, and the question was “what would I want to see”. That was my personal answer.
I think it would be fair. I don’t consider it to be “right after” as the team would’ve had 6 consecutive days of workouts and/or practice to get back in a groove. It’s just my opinion, but I don’t really buy any of the “you can’t play a game 4 days after a 14 day lockdown because of injury” narrative. To me this strictly benefits Michigan from a competitive standpoint and not much else. Especially after learning that the team was resuming workouts last Thursday.
If Michigan would be ready, then why is it a competitive advantage for Michigan?
Do you really think you can take two weeks off and suffer no consequences to your fitness level?
Studies suggest that you can start losing fitness after only 3-4 days without exercise. 14 days is a ton.
Obviously, it would be hard to expect the team to return in their first game back and play at the same level and/or be rust-free like they were before the lockdown.
Michigan would be ready to play, but that doesn’t mean it would be the ideal circumstances for them.
To me it’s the results of playing a season during the pandemic. Not every team can play at full strength or peak performance every game. That’s even true outside of a pandemic.
I’m not saying that the team would perform exactly like they did before the lockdown. Maybe their cardio is lowered and they’d be a bit more gassed late in the game? Maybe they would gain their fitness back in the 6 days leading up to the game? Either way, the former is a competitive issue and not an issue with respect to being capable of playing a game.
Evidenced by the fact that the women’s team is still scheduled to play on Thursday.
Edit: You’re also making an assumption that the players literally did no exercise in the 10 days of lockdown.
To me it fully depends on what kind of workouts they were able to do on Thrusday. If they hadn’t really been able to play basketball in the gym until today, I think the cancellation is perfectly reasonable. 3 days of practice after more or less sitting on your butt for 14 days is not only unfair but potentially dangerous. When Langford came back from his COVID sit out Izzo mentioned he wasn’t capable of playing 30 minutes. Now do that, but for an entire team.
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He also had COVID, though.
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True, but was it something that affected him? Probably my fault for assuming it didn’t affect him much, but I hadn’t heard anything about it hitting him too hard. I still think my overall point fits. An entire team can’t stay inside for 2 weeks and be expected to play a game 4 days later. It depends on what they did over the last couple days
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Also I mentioned this above, but go back to Nebraska’s shutdown that ended Saturday. According to Hoiberg they started working out as a team last weekend, and didn’t play until about a week later against MSU. They had the entire week before Saturday open and the B1G could have scheduled any of their makeup games in that stretch but didn’t.
Nebraska had a week of full workouts before the B1G said you need to play again. Michigan had an assessment on Thursday from what we know, but assessment /= full workout and from what we were told previously, the full shutdown wasn’t scheduled to end until yesterday. So going from yesterday-Sunday (a full week) fits the exact same timeline Nebraska had.
I just can’t comprehend why people are making a big deal out of this.
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Think this was posted before, but I found it satisfying. Interviews with Isaiah and Saddi Washington:
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I would suggest “potentially dangerous” is the operative concept and the overriding principle.
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I’ve mentioned quite a few here in the thread, but, just limiting myself to forward-looking questions that do not broach the question of accountability, I’d be asking how covid protocols have changed as a result of this, how those protocols will play when Michigan has to travel to Indy, what the AD thinks is fair and reasonable for the teams to preserve the opportunity to compete, Michigan’s position on a conference tournament, the process for providing input to the conference, etc. etc. Plenty there.
Yes, I know they’ve put out statements. Minimalist descriptions and schedule updates take us only so far. Would rather get as much real information as possible.
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Yeah, those are all valid questions. They are also things that haven’t been discussed publicly at all and I would be surprised if they ever were. Those were all valid questions when Michigan played Purdue – and we were told that the players felt safe with it. Public discourse around COVID protocols across college sports is essentially zero.
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It’s hard. I get that. It’s not the reporters’ fault where the leverage is on this. But problems could be averted and players kept safer if there was public discourse around it. People are going to be naturally more careful about their plans when they know they’ll have to defend those plans in public settings, i.e. in front of media. Not happening, but should.
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I think you are misunderstanding what I’m saying. Of course it would be great if there was transparency and we knew everything about every schools COVID policy. And that would absolutely keep players safer. I’m not trying to say that that isn’t a fair point and obviously media accountability is a great thing.
I’m just pointing out that that sort of information isn’t coming. We are in a 2+ week span where there has been no formal media access and just a couple of limited statements released about the process. Whenever Juwan meets with the media, he’s not going to go in-depth about COVID protocols. He’s going to say how important safety is and move on to the next question.
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It’s also telling that the players haven’t been active on social media discussing it in anyway, other than a couple of “is what it is“ type of notes when it first happened. Right, wrong, or indifferent… I think everyone is falling in line with the directives from leadership
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I’m assuming there will be some insight tonight as well
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I get it. There’s no question that information isn’t coming out the front door, and that it would be foolish to think it would come from Juwan. But that doesn’t stop people from having questions. As much as I’m sure the AD would like that to be true.
It’s been a notably tight ship. Different than something like concussiongate, where two embattled leaders within the AD perceived themselves as on the hot seat.
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