The NCAA has canceled all winter athletics due to the looming threat of Covid-19. This means that both the Men’s and Women’s Basketball tournaments will not be happening in 2020.
At first, the NCAA announced that March Madness for Men and Women would go on as scheduled just without allowing fans to attend games.
However, as the news of the Covid-19 continued, the NCAA made their decision, which will have a large impact on many aspects of the sport.
The canceling of both tournaments will cost the NCAA around $600 million, according to the Washington Post.
This will be a major blow to teams in mid-major conferences like Utah State who were going to make more than a million dollars for their basketball program for making the tournament.
The blows to these teams are far more than just financial, these teams will never have the exact same roster again and will likely not have a chance to go on a magical tournament run for some time.
The little guys are not the only ones affected by the cancellation of the tournament either; some big programs are losing a real chance at another national championship.
For the Men’s tournament, the main program affected is Kansas who were far and away and were favored to win it all. This was likely Bill Self’s best chance at getting a second ring, but that now can not happen.
In Women’s Basketball, this ends the season of a great South Carolina team who were looking to be unbeatable down the stretch. Dawn Staley was also looking for her 2nd title as coach of the Gamecocks.
Perhaps the biggest impact of the early end to the college basketball season is that we do not get to see the 2020 seniors bookmark the end of their careers with tournament runs.
The best example of this is Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu, who is the only player in the history of college basketball with 2,000 points; 1,000 assists; and 1,000 rebounds.
Ionescu has been talking about her team’s unfinished business in terms of winning a national championship, but she will not be given this opportunity.
The same is also true for Cassius Winston, who is the senior Point Guard for the Michigan State Spartans. Winston has had an unmatched career for the Spartans, including becoming the Big Ten Conference’s all-time leader in assists in a career.
He, like Ionescu, has also talked over the course of the season about having a chance to finish his career with a national championship, but with the news of the cancellations, his career is now over.
Obviously the tournaments being canceled is disappointing for everyone involved, but the most important thing is the safety of both the fans and the players. Even though the cancellation of these tournaments negatively affects the sport, the impact of not canceling these seasons would have been catastrophic.