Elmhurst's Faganel Hall got a nice upgrade over the offseason. But for the Bluejays' men's basketball team, the offseason is lasting a little longer than anyone would like. Elmhurst athletics photo

By Ryan Scott
D3hoops.com

“That first day was the hardest,” says Illinois Wesleyan women’s basketball coach, Mia Smith. “We were pretty much ready to get on the bus when we were told not to get on the bus.”

Already having to wait until January, like most Division III teams playing basketball this season, the IWU women were told they had to wait a little bit longer – a wait that turned into three weeks.

More than half the division has yet to play a game, but it’s different when you’re practicing and planning to play, when your whole conference has started and there are games going on all around you, yet you can’t take the floor.

“After everything that’s happened this year, the guys are used to things changing,” notes Nebraska Wesleyan men’s coach Dale Wellman. “Once you have one game canceled, you’re sort of prepared for the next, but that first game is really tough – to be all jacked up and ready to finally play and find out you have to go on pause is very deflating.”

NWU, which kicked off the season finally on Feb. 3, was tested and ready to play a week earlier only to have games canceled for weather. 

“Obviously you never want a pandemic,” says Wellman, whose most experienced returning player averaged just six minutes per game last season. “But for us the silver lining has been the ability to develop players, to learn the offensive and defensive systems.”

John Baines, men’s coach at Elmhurst, has similarly benefited from forced COVID changes, “We have all these videos now, 25 different three-minute YouTube clips of all these actions we need the guys to learn. I thought, why aren’t we doing this all the time? Rather than stopping everyone to teach the new guys, the juniors and seniors can keep practicing and we can just teach the new guys.”

Elmhurst, which still has yet to play, has suffered through multiple pauses, both planned and otherwise, to accommodate COVID realities. “You try to layer practices and build up skills over time, but when you take ten days off or more,” notes Baines. “You’re really starting over. When we came back to practice this week, it was really the fourth time we’ve ‘started’ the season this year. You can’t do what you normally do; you’re just trying not to get guys hurt.”

Smith agrees. “Our players came back [from a planned six-week holiday break, with no coaching contact] in surprisingly good shape. Not game shape, to be sure, but, given the circumstances, I couldn’t be happier about where we’re at. Three games a week will be a challenge, though.”

That brings up another issue with missing games: scheduling. With compact conference schedules and, in some cases, conference tournaments already on the calendar, making up missed games will be a challenge.  Elmhurst was able to put two back on the schedule, which already features three games a week for a month, but with every game postponed, there’s a real chance it also becomes a game missed.

Cancellation of the NCAA Tournaments, announced this week, gives room for conferences to extend the schedule – almost no team in the country will be anywhere near using up their allotted practice days anytime soon – but institutional pressure on spring sports and financial considerations may make that impossible. “We’ll play as long as my athletic department allows us to play,” says Smith, an optimistic statement, echoed around the nation.

Not playing carries some stigma, too. A rash of canceled games can’t help but bring whispers that teams aren’t being careful, are in denial of the realities, or simply don’t care enough to stay safe. Those accusations may be true in some instances, but there are also lots of external realities at play. Nebraska Wesleyan sits less than a mile from the University of Nebraska, with tens of thousands of students coming from all over; it’s inherently a more potentially contagious environment than other, more isolated campuses.

In an effort to prioritize health and safety, NCAA guidelines don’t provide much leeway for false positives. Additionally, early studies have shown that PCR tests, used by many schools, are more prone to detect non-replicating leftover virus cells in people who’ve been previously infected.

All three teams mentioned here had significant numbers of players come through COVID before October, which was great for fall practice, with most players being within the 90 day “safety” window, but makes testing now, outside that window, much more likely to produce positive results.

Every active team has concerns and challenges to one degree or another. So much of the postponements and cancellations come from just how contagious this virus has turned out to be. Teams that are waiting longer to play simply have to be more creative in remaining prepared.

Says Smith: “We’ve played miniature golf. We’ve played dodgeball. We’ve had quite a few practices where we never even take a ball off the rack. We’re also scrimmaging way more than we ever would in a normal year – anything to get us out of the ruts.”

During isolation, NWU players were only allowed outside for short, scheduled times, to walk or run a trail that circles campus. “We quickly put together a conditioning schedule,” Wellman says, “but then, of course, we got 14 inches of snow, so we couldn’t even do that.”

Ultimately, though, everything is just an obstacle to the real goal: playing games.

“I want my seniors to have something,” says Smith, who also notes just how much of a typical college experience students have already sacrificed off the court. “Illinois Wesleyan is a place with lots of interaction between students and it’s all gone. We don’t have grad programs, so it’s pretty unlikely that any of my seniors will be back [next year].”

Even with the opportunity to nurture a young squad, Wellman recognizes how important games will be. “At some point, players want to play and coaches want to coach; you need to give them something as a reward for all the player development they’re doing in practice.”

Baines’ Bluejays have extra incentive to get on the floor, namely to start moving on. One of 32 teams still alive last March when the NCAA Tournament was called off, they’ve had lots of extra time to deal with disappointment of a canceled game.

“We’re trying to win and all,” he says, “But that’s not what they need right now, mentally. Players just need to get on the court, to have something to look forward to, to get ready for.”

Ready they will be. “I’ve had the Carroll scouting report on my desk for a month now. We may not be good – you never know until you get on the floor for a game – but we will be prepared!”