The ACC tournament plays on as the world falls apart around it
It felt like the day before a hurricane, one of those glorious, sunny, breezy days that seemed determined to disguise the disaster lurking round the corner. North Carolina and Syracuse ran up and down the court Wednesday night while the world fell apart around them, the last minutes of normalcy at an ACC tournament that was headed into the unknown and the unprecedented.
There was never any announcement in the Greensboro Coliseum that the doors would be closed to fans Thursday. The North Carolina fans who left early as the Tar Heels got utterly trounced — 81-53, a miserable end to an execrable season, the worst ACC tournament loss in UNC history — knew they wouldn’t be back. When did the Syracuse fans find out their stay in Greensboro would be cut short yet again, but for an entirely different reason?
Given the pace of change in the world of sports, there was no guarantee the rest of the tournament would even be played, fans or no fans. “It’s a fluid situation,” ACC associate commissioner Paul Brazeau said as the conference steered into uncharted waters.
“My hope was we could play the games,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said, then paused, almost as if he was realizing in real time. “This could be our last game.”
The NCAA announced its men’s and women’s tournaments would be played in empty arenas and the ACC and other conferences followed. The NBA suspended its season after a player was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg left the Cornhuskers’ Big Ten tournament game and was taken to a hospital, his team quarantined in its locker room and that tournament very much in doubt. The NHL, typically, dithered.
This is all moving too fast. Wednesday was the longest month of the year.
Locking down the arena was unfortunate but necessary, perhaps an overreaction but better than the alternative. Epidemiologists insist the best way of stopping the spread of the COVID-19 disease is to avoid large public gatherings where the coronavirus can spread easily from one to thousands. The conference and NCAA tournaments add the additional threat of then scattering the potentially infected across states as fans return home.
The ACC only did this grudgingly, kicking and screaming behind the NCAA and the Big 12 and the Big Ten, its hand forced just like HB2. It had to be done. Based on what happened in China and South Korea and Italy, we have almost no idea what we’re getting into: based on an estimate by the American Hospital Association, 10 times worse than a severe flu season, perhaps more than 400,000 dead. As we wait for the assault on our health-care system, social distancing is among the best medicine.
Drastic times call for drastic measures.
What strange days these will be. For all the empty-building jokes about Boston College home games or the ACC tournament in Brooklyn, we really don’t know what it’s going to be like.
There will be bands and cheerleaders, families and broadcasters, media and team staff. There will be, presumably, a public-address announcer to announce fouls if not sponsor promos.
But no Red Panda. No riding the refs. No baby races (thankfully). None of the noise usually associated with college basketball. Or any sport.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 12:13 AM.
