'An easy decision': Big 12 joins others in canceling conference tournaments, casting doubt on March Madness - The Dallas Morning News

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – March Madness has become the latest victim of the coronavirus.

Scratch Selection Sunday. Forget the Final Four. There will be no brackets waiting to be busted and not a single shining moment at the end of the tourney journey.

Faced with the spread of pandemic CONVID-19 and with wholesale conference tournament cancellations – including the Big 12 in Kansas City – the NCAA shut down the biggest event it runs, its cash cow and a staple of modern-day America. The official announcement came just after 3 p.m. Central.

“Today, NCAA President Mark Emmert and the Board of Governors canceled the Division I men’s and women’s 2020 basketball tournaments, as well as all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships,” it read. “This decision is based on the evolving COVID-19 public health threat, our ability to ensure the events do not contribute to spread of the pandemic, and the impracticality of hosting such events at any time during this academic year given ongoing decisions by other entities.”

Other championships, including the baseball and softball World Series scheduled for June, are also off.

“It’s a sad day,” said Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, a two-time chairman of the Division I men’s selection committee. “I can’t take issue with the decision because all medical indications we’re getting is there will be a lot of proliferation of this disease in the weeks ahead.

“It’s a sad day. It’s a part of our culture and this year we’re going to have go without it.”

The personal impact is significant.

The Baylor women’s basketball team, expected to be a No. 1 seed, won’t get a chance to repeat last year’s championship run. The Baylor men’s team, enjoying its best season under Scott Drew, had Final Four hopes as well.

“We been working since April 2019 for this moment and had it all taken away at the snap of a finger,” tweeted Baylor junior guard MaCio Teague.

Added Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades to the Associated Press: “We’ve got some great kids and they’re handling it really well, but some of our seniors are really distraught. This was their last shot.”

Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma were all in the mix for the men’s tournament with Tech coming off a runner-up national finish last season. The TCU women’s team was likely to end a 10-year NCAA drought and Texas A&M was a near-certain pick to be in the field.

“We are still picking our hearts off the ground & in time they will be securely back in our chest,” tweeted TCU coach Raegan Pebley, with video of the baseball team welcoming her players back to campus.

“I feel very badly for the athletes,” Bowlsby said. “It looks like there some conversation about being able to give some kind of additional eligibility as a result of it if young people want it. But it’s a bitter pill to swallow.”

Bowlsby said Big 12 had been in “constant contact” with NCAA after it realized the cancelation was a possibility.

Oklahoma State President Burns Hargis, the Big 12’s representative on the NCAA Board of Governors, notified Bowlsby after the vote. The NCAA’s move did raise questions.

During an appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey wondered why the NCAA extended its cancelation to the spring sports that don’t finish until June.

“I’m surprised we’ve made a decision now in mid-March not to play a baseball or softball national championship event,” Sankey said. “So I look forward to learning what informed that decision.” 

Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said he expected the basketball cancellation given news developments in a surreal two-day span.

“No one can recall a moment like this at all,” Bjork said by phone. “The totality of all the championships definitely caught us off-guard. I wasn’t surprised about basketball. What I was surprised that we might such a leap on the rest of the spring sports.”

The Big 12 announced that it was suspending all regular-season competition, recruiting, and out-of-season practices until March 29. Other Division I conferences made similar announcements.

A decision by the NCAA and numerous conferences Wednesday to limit fan access was not enough given breaking developments soon after.

The NBA experienced its first positive coronavirus test in Utah’s Rudy Goebert. The league quickly announced a suspension of its season, ratcheting up the stakes for all other professional and college sports entities.

After Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas declared a state of emergency on Thursday morning, the Big 12 made a decision to cancel its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Just 45 minutes before Texas and Texas Tech were to tip off in the men’s tournament quarterfinals at the Sprint Center before a “limited access” audience, both teams were pulled off the court.

Then the Big 12 canceled its tournament in line with various other conferences from the Big Ten, ACC, SEC and Pac-12 to the American in Fort Worth and Conference USA in Frisco.

Dallas-based ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, who was scheduled to call the Big 12 tournament, suggested in Kansas City that March Madness would be the next domino to fall.

“Life interrupts the college basketball season is how I look at it,” Fraschilla said. “These are things that happen whether it’s the start of a war or 9-11 or something like this pandemic, it’s something that we all who live in the playground of life in sports have to understand. There’s more important things than a Big 12 tournament or an NCAA Tournament or the start of Major League Baseball. We don’t much about what’s going on with the virus, it’s just prudent especially to protect our student-athletes.

“As disappointed as I am, this seems to be an easy decision.”

You can find more news about the coronavirus here.

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