What do college basketball tournaments look like as the country starts to make decisions about crowds and the coronavirus outbreak? We went to Las Vegas to find out. LAS VEGAS — Hand-sanitizing dispensers stationed outside locker rooms and along arena concourses. Workers wearing rubber gloves and spritzing hand railings with disinfectant up and down aisles while games are going on.
Players keeping a healthy distance — no selfies or slapping hands — from the fans who traveled far to cheer them. Over the last week, the epicenter of this new and evolving normal in college basketball has been Las Vegas, where four conferences — the Pacific-12, West Coast, Mountain West and Western Athletic — are holding their men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. These are the types of events that public health officials say are anathema to containing the virus, which has spread from China through Europe and to the United States. On Wednesday, the N.
C. A. A. , faced with an epidemic, announced that it would play its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, which brought in close to $1 billion in revenue last year, without spectators at the host arenas this year.
The eight tournaments here, four men’s and four women’s, consist of teams from 39 schools and 13 states. They have brought tens of thousands of fans into close contact at arenas, hotels and bars, and then, after several days, will disperse them back home. Yet those fans, like players and coaches, have such a deep investment in their teams that they are reluctant to see their season end without what has been a carrot since the first game of the season: a trip to the N. C.
A. A. tournament. That was evident Tuesday night the way Gonzaga fans filled Orleans Arena and roared as the Zags polished off St.
Mary’s, 84-66, to win the West Coast tournament final. A few moments after Joel Ayayi, the tournament’s most valuable player, dribbled out the final seconds, he and his teammates stood atop a stage at center court as confetti rained down and they were presented the title trophy. As his players began to cut down the nets, Gonzaga Coach Mark Few, whose team is expected to be a No. 1 seed and open the tournament in Spokane, Wash.
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, its home city, acknowledged the uncertainty of what lay ahead. The Ivy League on Tuesday canceled its men’s and women’s tournaments, two other conferences said they would close their events to fans, and the N. C. A.
A. followed suit on Wednesday. “We’re hoping — and counting on — that the right decisions will be made, not only to protect everybody but fully understanding how much this tournament means to the players,” Few said before the N. C.
A. A. announced its plans. “They’ve waited all their lives for this.
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He added: “When you’re at a program like Gonzaga, this is what we play for at this time of year. ” Gonzaga, of course, was not alone. While more precautionary measures were taken by the Ivy League and the conferences — the Big West and the Mid-American — that have barred fans, many of the major conferences — the Southeastern, Big East, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 — announced by the start of their tournaments on Wednesday that they were going forward as planned, except to close the locker rooms to the news media.
Those major conferences, of course, had far more to lose financially by shutting their doors to fans or shutting down their tournaments. It has been clear that at the tournaments here, many want the show to go on. While airline travel has plummeted and hotel vacancies have spiked in recent weeks, the Las Vegas tournaments’ popularity has not taken a dent. The Mountain West men’s championship game drew 10,292 — 1,300 more than last season.
The W. C. C. ’s drew 7,210 — about 500 fewer fans than last season.
And the Pac-12 women’s tournament drew a total attendance of 34,134, about a third more than last year. (The Pac-12 men’s tournament and the WAC women’s were set to begin Wednesday, and the WAC men’s tournament was scheduled to begin Thursday. ) The robust attendance may be driven by teams like the San Diego State men, the Oregon women and the perennially powerful Gonzaga men — all of whom are contending to win their first national championship. In interviews with more than two dozen fans, almost all viewed the risk of contracting the virus, while frightening, as largely distant and something that could be mitigated by proper hygiene.
“We’ve already booked a flight to Sacramento,” said Cindy Hotze, who with her husband, Ward, also plans to travel to the likely site of San Diego State’s first-round game. As other women did, Hotze pulled a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse, displaying it as if it were a talisman. “We were never not going to come,” said Doug Brynelson, who with his wife, Marcia, bought tickets to the Pac-12 women’s tournament months ago to watch Oregon.
““There are certain things that make you go ‘what the heck.”
’” The threat of the virus was most real for Brigham Young University fans who attended the team’s loss to St. Mary’s in a W. C. C.
semifinal on Monday. Earlier that day, the university announced that a fan who had contracted the virus had attended the Cougars’ home game late last month against Gonzaga, which was attended by nearly 19,000 fans. The university said it had alerted those who sat in proximity to the infected fan. “All of us are trying to stay calm and take it step-by-step,” said Karen Tibbitts, a Salt Lake City resident who attended that game and the one Monday night.
Such composure was not always easy to come by. When Jordan Ford of St. Mary’s sank a shot just before the buzzer to beat B. Y.
U. in a W. C. C.
semifinal, a small band of St. Mary’s students were soon in a group embrace, jumping up and down. “Sometimes emotions sweep you up and you forget there’s a deadly virus going around,” said Kevin Collins, a senior at the Moraga, Calif. , college.
It was hard not to be aware of the heightened concerns at the Pac-12 women’s tournament, which was held at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. There were hand sanitizers — some of them empty — at almost every turn in the hallway corridors, where locker rooms, dining areas and media work rooms were situated. Workers wiped disinfectant on the railings that ran down the middle of aisles during each quarter as well as vacant seats. This was a comfort to some — including Stanford’s coach, Tara VanDerveer, whose mother sat behind the bench.
They had discussed her staying home. “But she said: ‘No. I’m healthy. I’m 92½ and I want to come,’” VanDerveer said.
“She’s having a blast. ” On the court, precautions aside, there was little out of the ordinary. “We were told at the beginning of the tournament not to take too many pictures with fans and not to have too much physical contact with people you don’t know,” said Satou Sabally, a forward for Oregon. “The longer this week went on, the less fearful people were about touching each other.
” Myah Pace, a guard for the University of San Diego, said that fist bumps and elbow bumps had replaced handshakes when team captains met with referees before games and that players had been more cautious at practice. “But I’m not going to lie,” Pace said. “When the ball goes up and the game starts, we’re all in it and all that kind of goes out the window. ” Indeed, postgame handshake lines proceeded as normal at the tournaments.
Josh Therrien, the Gonzaga men’s trainer, said he was bringing extra hand sanitizer to team meals and meetings, reminding players to stay hydrated and nourished, and monitoring anyone for flulike symptoms, which often crop up at this time of year. Last week, there was a meeting at which Athletic Director Mike Roth laid out how the university was monitoring developments. “We try to get our information from Johns Hopkins and the C. D.
C. ,” Roth said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “And not from Twitter. ” Therrien emphasized that there was much that was unknown, and said it felt as if circumstances were changing by the hour, not daily.
This was Monday night. By the next night, the Ivy League had canceled its tournament in Boston and others had barred their fans. By Wednesday, the N. C.
A. A. tournaments had also barred their fans. “It’s the time where we get to showcase our talent to the whole world,” Corey Kispert, a forward for Gonzaga, said in the locker room on Tuesday night.
“It’s one of the most watched and attended events in the United States. I understand that if there’s health needs that need to be addressed, but it would be a real shame if we don’t get to play in front of anybody. Then it’s like practice. I really hope they find a way to keep fans in the arena.
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