College Basketball’s Uncertain Return to the Court

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last March, it forced sports everywhere to shut down. And while the NBA, NHL and MLB were all eventually able to return to action, college basketball was forced to cancel the rest of their season...including their marquee event, the NCAA Tournament. Now, more than eight months later, college hoops makes its cautious return with a tipoff on Wednesday. Myron Medcalf tells us the teams and players to look out for on the court, and also whether the sport itself will be able to complete its season...and what March Madness might look like in a pandemic. Then, Heather Dinich sets the scene for tomorrow’s college football playoff rankings, amidst another round of postponements and positive COVID tests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you happen to just be joining us, the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments for this year have been canceled in a statement that was just released.
0:10.5	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.
0:25.1	That was from March 12th, when we officially learned that March Madness was taking on a
0:31.7	more darkly literal meaning in America this year. But starting tomorrow, men's college basketball is finally back,
0:39.9	albeit mid-pandemic.
0:42.8	And today, ESPN's Myron Medcaf
0:45.7	catches you up on a season that will be vastly different
0:48.9	from any other you may remember.
0:52.8	I'm Pablo Torre. It's Tuesday, November 24th. This is ESPN Daily.
1:04.1	Myron, I am incredibly excited to talk to you today, so thank you for joining ESPN Daily.
1:10.2	Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited.
1:12.2	Myron Medcalf has been covering college basketball for ESPN for nearly a decade.
1:17.5	So my excitement, I should admit, comes from a place of utter ignorance.
1:22.3	Because after eight months of this pandemic, after a cancellation of March madness,
1:26.8	I have literally no idea, Myron,
1:29.0	what to expect from college basketball at all this season in terms of the virus, in terms of
1:33.1	what's happening on the floor. All I really know right now is that both Duke and Arizona
1:37.7	announced yesterday that they are postponing their opening games because of COVID, and
1:41.8	Tennessee's Rick Barnes got diagnosed with coronavirus.
1:45.6	So let's just begin with tip off tomorrow.
1:48.7	What's this all going to look like?
1:50.8	Well, I think that's the million-dollar question in college basketball.
	...

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