Coronavirus Leads N.C.A.A. to Bar Fans From National Basketball Tournaments

At Madison Square Garden in New York, things started out with business as usual for the Big East on Wednesday night as the men’s conference tournament began. But before the second game was over, the league announced that it, too, would tightly restrict attendance, allowing only essential personnel and certain family members to come to the arena for the remaining three days of the competition.

And so the sport had braced for a tournament season unlike any other.

Greg McDermott, the Creighton men’s coach, has an idea of what to expect because he once worked at Nebraska’s Wayne State, a Division II program that regularly played in front of sparse audiences.

“My understanding is there’s still going to be a little family there, so there’ll be a few people clapping hands every once in a while, but without a question it’s going to be an interesting experience,” he said. “We’ll sell it to our guys like, ‘Hey, it’s never happened in our history, and I hope it never happens again in our history, so it’s going to be something that you’re going to be able to look back on that you were part of something that was really, really unique.’”

Alan Blinder reported from Atlanta, and Kevin Draper and Ben Shpigel from New York. Billy Witz contributed reporting from Las Vegas, and Adam Zagoria from New York.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/sports/coronavirus-ncaa-tournament.html