Notes on a D2 Hoops Season
By Chris Granozio
I didn’t want to write this column. The state of regional D2 basketball is a fiasco. Trying to keep my regional schedule current requires a secretary. I’m sick of the pandemic and all the scheduling chaos that has resulted from it the past two winters. We were supposed to be over this by now. I so wanted to write about basketball this week, but in speaking with so many coaches and fans recently, this nightmare remains the overwhelming topic du jour, so alas, I succumbed and decided to chronicle the aftermath of the latest unwelcome breakout.
In the words of one irate fan of an NE10 team: “That’s it! I’ve had it, dude… I’m done!”
And who could blame him? As of this writing, there have been 53 games involving regional teams postponed or suspended due to the pandemic, including five this coming weekend. And that doesn’t even take into account the two games in November that Georgian Court had to cancel (against Saint Rose and Molloy, respectively) due to another issue that was covered in these pages two months ago, one which resulted in the suspensions of numerous players, preventing the Lions from fielding a team of five.
Breaking It Down
Let’s take a closer look at those 53 postponed games, a good portion of which will never be made up this season. It all began on Opening Weekend, when Daemen – playing in a tournament in Texas with all its personnel fully vaccinated – came into contact with the dreaded virus and was forced to scrap its home classic a few days beforehand. Two of the other teams in that tournament – Bentley and University of the Sciences – decided to play each other that Saturday, shifting the venue to Waltham, MA. The other participant – Daemen’s regular ersatz co-host, Roberts Wesleyan – added Le Moyne, which originally had been idle that weekend, as the two Upstate New York teams played for the first time in two decades.
After that weekend, no cases of the Omicron variant were evident in the region for nearly a month. Then, on December 10, I was notified that Pace’s crossover clash vs. Jefferson the next day (a game I was planning to attend) was to be postponed. Over the course of the week, seven other games were scrapped, including two in different parts of Florida that left two regional teams – Caldwell and Le Moyne – settling for solo games rather than two-game trips. By the time we reached the ensuing mandatory break, as student-athletes returned home, the variant spread like the proverbial wildfire and nearly every team was forced to reckon with a sobering new reality: schedules were going to be seriously affected, including the cancelation of non-conference encounters. A total of 22 crossover games were put on hold, and to date, only one (Adelphi at Bloomfield) was eventually played. Two others – Southern New Hampshire’s non-league home games vs. NE10 rivals Pace and Franklin Pierce – had been rescheduled and tabled twice. That original Jefferson-Pace game is currently slated to be played on January 13, for the record, and a couple of other coaches have told me they still hope to reschedule a game or two, if possible.
As my colleague Steve Zerdelian referenced recently, intra-league games should command the greatest attention and be the priority moving forward. The conference most affected thus far has been the CACC, which has lost 12 league games to date, though 10 have already been rescheduled (make sure to check out the master schedule on this site, as I update it almost hourly, whenever new information is made available). There have been 11 NE10 games wiped out thus far, five of which have makeup dates (SNHU at Stonehill was actually postponed twice within a week’s time). The ECC – which has fewer teams and therefore fewer games – has been pretty much unscathed, with only three conference contests shelved, none of which have been rescheduled. The team with the longest acticve pause is Southern New Hampshire, which hasn't played since December 9 at Dominican - the team with the second-longest dry spell, having last taken the court two days later.
Getting Creative
With only seven weeks remaining in the regular season, certain coaches have thought outside the box, reaching out to other teams, and piecemealing games together. Last night, Daemen – which had a region-high five games wiped out, including four at home, hosted Pace in a game neither team imagined would be on their calendar just days earlier. In the CACC, Nyack and Chestnut Hill – who had been slated to play later this month and both of whom had games postponed on them yesterday – decided to take advantage of the opportunity and get their game out of the way… a wise strategic move that helps free up a future date for an inevitable make-up league game (Here’s an odd sidenote: with the Griffins’ women’s team playing its regularly-scheduled game at Wilmington, it is believed that yesterday was the first time in CACC regular-season history in which the men’s and women’s teams of one member institution played different league opponents on the same day). Similarly, NE10 divisional foes New Haven and American International shifted their second head-to-head encounter from February to last night in Springfield, while AIC also moved up its Adelphi home game a month to this Sunday. Additionally, the busy Yellow Jackets squeezed in a game vs. Division 1 Rhode Island last week after the Rams' Atlantic-10 rival LaSalle postponed on them.
From a conference standpoint, two leagues held meetings earlier this week and prioritized conference games. The NE-10 is mulling over an alteration to the playoff format that would include every team. It will be interesting to monitor in the coming weeks.
Testing… Testing…
To a man, every coach I have spoken with is either unhappy with the mandatory testing procedures, especially for asymptomatic players, and equally exasperated with the disparity of school practices, some of which allow games to be nixed if one or two players test positive, while others state that if there are enough able bodies to field a team, then the show must go on. One ECC coach expressed his rage thusly:
“Under these restrictions, Michael Jordan never would have played the flu game,” referring to the Hall of Famer famously willing the Chicago Bulls to victory in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals with a 38-point performance vs. the Utah Jazz, including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 25 seconds left.
Another coach in the CACC told me – and I paraphrase – that “for decades, basketball players have played with colds and the flu, and if they don’t want to, they can sit out. It should be up to them.”
COVID fear and hysteria – warranted or not – has affected just about every phase of our lives, but the over-arching questions are valid ones: Is anyone really worried about the players and coaches becoming gravely ill as a result of exposure to this latest strain? Why can’t the games be played regardless? And when is enough enough?
Light at the End of the Tunnel?
It is common knowledge that the latest variant is much milder than its predecessor, so the more people are exposed to it and adapt to the symptoms, which mirror those of the common cold, the hope is that we will return to some semblance of “normalcy” moving forward. There is no shame having contracted COVID, because every human being will eventually cross its path. That’s the nature of viruses, after all. To wit, politicizing the pandemic is useless folly. We are all vulnerable and we all must learn to acclimate ourselves to it. As for the patchwork schedules, more adaptation is required, and I remain optimistic the worst is behind us. As for the road ahead? Well, for the next seven weeks, it will be littered with three-game weeks and reformatted postseason tournaments, not to mention the imminent weather-related travel issues, all of which constitutes a 2021-22 season that is a true winter of discontent.
Until next time, Here's wishing health, peace and Happy hooping to all!