Expect the unexpected as most unpredictable NCAA Tournament opens against backdrop of pandemic

NCAA Tournament in a pandemic: “This is really going to be something to watch and a great case study for someone to write about one day.”

How will the NCAA protect players during pandemic?

To minimize the chances that COVID-19 disrupts the postseason, the NCAA took the drastic step of staging the entire tournament within a soft bubble in and around Indianapolis, where the governing body has been headquartered since 1999.

Conducting the event within a single area congregates every team in one footprint, eliminating the coast-to-coast travel of a normal year and lessening potential exposure to the coronavirus, while allowing for universal coronavirus protocols.

“I think they’re as prepared as can be,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. “I expect they’re going to have to continue to adapt. I know when we started, we had to adapt.”

Teams will be housed in hotels connected to the Indiana Convention Center, which will serve as the tournament’s practice venue, and placed on “dedicated hotel floors,” according to the NCAA, with access to socially distanced meeting and dining rooms.

The environment may help schools create a firmer bubble of protection by limiting personnel to three locations: the hotel, the playing venues and the buses tasked with shuttling players and coaches to and from both sites.

“Arena, bus and hotel is a good way to put it,” Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel said of the Wolverines’ tournament plans.

“As far as pep rallies and the normal things that would go on during the NCAA Tournament, it’s not going to happen. It’s really going to be all about making sure for those that are there, that they are healthy and safe and we minimize those kinds of events so we don’t have any outbreaks occurring because of this.”

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The tournament’s 67 games will be played across six venues. Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, will be the sole host for the Elite Eight, Final Four and national championship game. First Four games, scheduled for Thursday, will be played outside of Indianapolis: at Purdue’s Mackey Arena, in West Lafayette, and Indiana’s Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, in Bloomington.

The remaining venues are Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse; Indiana Farmers Coliseum, the home arena for Indiana University — Purdue University Indianapolis; and Bankers Life Fieldhouse, home of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and WNBA’s Indiana Fever.

Before arriving, every member of a school’s 34-person travel party must produce seven consecutive daily negative tests for COVID-19. Teams that clinched automatic tournament bids earlier this week began to arrive in Indianapolis on Saturday, with more teams arriving Sunday.

After getting to Indianapolis, members of the travel party will undergo two more rounds of testing in a 12-hour span and isolate in hotel rooms until given negative results, and then be given daily PCR tests for the remainder of their stay.

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