5th anniversary of COVID cancellations brings back painful memories for teams, NCAA officials

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Robert Morris coach Andrew Toole stood next to the staging area near midcourt Tuesday night, the confetti strewn around him as the Colonials danced, mingled with fans and climbed ladders to cut down the nets.

It was a moment of pure joy for the school located in suburban Pittsburgh.

But for Toole, winning his first Horizon League Tournament title came with bittersweet memories from the last time his team earned an NCAA Tournament bid — two days before the event was canceled on March 12, 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It was the worst locker room I've ever been in,” he said minutes after the victory over Youngstown State, describing a team meeting from five years earlier. "To be part of the greatest tournament in college athletics and maybe sports in general and you don't see that come to fruition when you've earned it, when you've won it, it's a killer. I've had more opportunities to try to do it again, but these guys only have a short amount of time so when you get it in your hands and it gets robbed from you, it's heartbreaking.”

It wasn't just Toole and Robert Morris, of course. Nor was it just college basketball. On that Thursday afternoon, NCAA officials announced the cancellation of all remaining winter and spring championships. Other sporting events around the world ended up being affected as well, including the Tokyo Olympics.

The decision to cancel March Madness had long-lasting consequences everywhere, especially for schools whose one shining moment often comes from the journey of earning the only NCAA bid their conference receives. For Robert Morris, that was the Northeast Conference.

At Indiana University-Indianapolis, that meant the women's team put its first NCAA game on hold for two more seasons despite winning the 2020 Horizon League tourney.

And even now, NCAA officials are keenly aware of the anger, sadness, frustration and disbelief caused by the decision to prioritize safety over so many dreams of competing for a national championship.

“That was a real tough day for college athletics, a really difficult day for the NCAA staff as well as the (selection) committee,” this year's men's committee chair Bubba Cunningham said during a Zoom call Wednesday. “At that time, there was an awful lot of anxiety and concern about what was happening to the country.”

The first indications the sports world could get swept up in the health crisis filtered out March 11, 2020, when the NBA announced it was suspending its season after Utah center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the COVID-19 virus.

The next scare came later that night at the Big Ten Tournament when Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg became visibly ill on the sideline and was taken to an Indianapolis hospital. He did not have COVID-19.

By the next morning, some conferences decided their tournaments would continue without fans. But as Michigan and Rutgers warmed up for the first game in Indianapolis on March 12, and UMass and VCU did the same at the Atlantic 10 Tournament in Brooklyn, New York, all four teams learned they weren't going to play.

“Two minutes left in warmup, you're out on the court, you've got your game face on, you're locked in and then no game,” then-VCU coach Mike Rhoades said at the time. “It's surreal.”

UMass coach Matt McCall went a step further, telling his players that 10 years later, they would still remember where they were when the announcement came.

It's a day nobody in the college basketball world may ever forget, and five years later that's still the case.

South Carolina forward Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk was looking forward to seeing Illinois make a NCAA run as a freshman with the Illini.

“It just stinked,” Bosmans-Verdonk said. “It was like damn, they robbed us, you know? But I mean the state of the world at the time, there were more serious issues than basketball.”

The 6-foot-9 Belgian missed the final 19 games with a foot injury that sidelined him for part of the following season.

“In the midst of the pandemic, with all the worries and not being able to go home and all those things, I was able to kind of look ahead," he said. "I mean, like when I get back healthy, I’ll be able to help this team get to where we were and better next year. So that’s what I try to do, keep a positive outlook in the midst of the craziness because it was a crazy time for everybody.”

Toole remembers seeing the official announcement on social media before he could even tell his devastated players.

“Your whole team knows about it, so you can't control the narrative,” Toole said. “You can't do anything to soften the blow. So we met that Friday morning and you walk in and it's like a morgue. I mean, they already knew the news. You didn't have to tell them, that's what made it so hard.”

While the news may have hit hardest at schools such as Robert Morris, it was a big deal everywhere.

Kansas and Gonzaga were ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in what turned out to be the final Associated Press Top 25 of the season. Dayton and San Diego State were ranked Nos. 3 and 6, and Kentucky was No. 8.

“Five years ago today we weren’t doing this!” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey wrote on X, posted with a photo of a basketball game. “Never take for granted the special opportunities and the chance to watch teams from the greatest basketball conference in the land!”

It's still unfathomable for today's players to comprehend what March 2020 was like for their predecessors, the ones who never reaped the real rewards from their accomplishments.

“I think for those guys, all the hard work they put in to not go to the tournament, it's a sour taste, a sour feeling,” Robert Morris guard Josh Omojafo said. “The team this year, we knew (what happened in 2020). We used that as motivation, you know, we wanted to get that back for them. That was our model for the whole year.”

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