[See our complete guide to March Madness.]
The keys to the NCAA basketball tournament have been frozen, but alongside any chaos on the court that may occur between now and early April, the coronavirus will be a persistent threat to bring down the two landmark college sports events.
If a team in the men’s or women’s tournament does not have five eligible players available for a game, their opponent will advance automatically. And while a handful of substitute squads were on standby to travel to game locations in Indiana and Texas, the NCAA said on Wednesday that no new teams would be added to the tournament grounds.
The men’s tournament, which starts Thursday with four games played, includes 68 teams. The women’s competition, scheduled to start on Sunday, has 64 teams in its field.
“The teams have been very cooperative,” said Dan Gavitt, vice president of basketball for the NCAA, this week in Indiana, where the men’s tournament will be held. “They understand the challenges – they’ve lived through the challenges throughout the regular season – and so things are going very well now. But no one is letting their guard down. No one is making assumptions about the lack of challenges in the future. “
The teams have been arriving for the men’s tournament since Saturday, and the NCAA said on Wednesday that seven people tested positive for the virus after about 6,900 samples had been processed. As the association requires several people affiliated with the tournament to test regularly, it left open the possibility that few – if any – of these positive results would involve players or coaches.
Although neither team gave up before this week’s deadline for a replacement school to be invited to compete, the virus caused turbulence in both tournaments.
Virginia, the 2019 male champion, will not arrive in Indiana until the end of this week, his plans delayed because of a positive test and contact tracking that has quarantined most of the team. The Cavaliers, one of the top seed in the west, are scheduled to play against Ohio 13 on Saturday night.
In the women’s tournament, Connecticut, the seed in the River Walk region, will be without coach Geno Auriemma at least in his first game after he tested positive for the virus. If UConn avoids a loss to No. 16 High Point, Auriemma must also lose his team’s second round game.
Although NCAA officials are imposing what they call a “controlled environment” around teams, with protocols that govern everything from bus travel to testing, Mark Emmert, the association’s president, acknowledged in an interview that cases may arise during the tournaments, which are scheduled to end in early April.
“The first objective is not a serious medical problem,” said Emmert on Monday. “This does not mean that we will not have to leave the teams or that someone’s test is positive – we are not naive about it – but without serious medical problems.”