Winthrop players dreamed of playing in front of NCAA crowd. Then came coronavirus threat
Winthrop head coach Pat Kelsey called his team together for a huddle before practice ended on Wednesday afternoon.
Less than two hours before, the NCAA made public its decision to play its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments without fans because of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. Only “essential staff” and limited family will be in the arena with the team.
Kelsey saw the news right before practice, he said.
Winthrop athletic director Dr. Ken Halpin came in during practice to tell the rest of the coaching staff, assistant coaches said.
But the players — who spent all season in the cavernous Winthrop Coliseum, playing in front of 2,000 to 4,000 spectators for the past two months so it could have a chance to be on the March Madness stage that everyone else wants to be on — didn’t know at all.
That is, until Wednesday’s final huddle.
“We’re going to exit this huddle feeling all sorts of ways ...” Kelsey said, as if he was delaying the news the players hadn’t heard yet.
Kelsey then told them: “When we play, there won’t be any fans in the arena.”
Redshirt junior transfer Chandler Vaudrin’s jaw dropped. Sophomore Micheal Anumba looked toward the ground. The disappointment was palpable.
“It is what it is,” Kelsey told The Herald in an interview after practice. “It’s a unique time in American history. I’ve been on this Earth for 44 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this ...
“It’s disappointing when you first hear it just because March Madness is madness — and part of the madness is the bands and the cheerleaders and the fans and the hubbub around the arena. And that’s obviously disappointing, but it’s a piece of adversity that everybody in the tourney will need to face. And it comes down to who deals with it the best.”
The ‘unique’ 2020 NCAA tournament
Winthrop senior Josh Ferguson will compete in his second and last NCAA tournament in front of a mostly empty stadium. Graduate transfer Hunter Hale will play his first and final one there, too.
Russell Jones Jr., a freshman, told The Herald he thought this might happen, but he “wasn’t expecting to hear the news today.” He also said that despite the fact that this different tournament viewing experience might cause higher TV ratings — and that more eyes might be on Winthrop than ever before — the news was still devastating.
“I mean, it’s a big hit, you know?” Jones said. “Of course you want to feel the whole experience of the tournament. For me, in my freshman year, I was looking forward to that. But I understand that we can’t miss a beat, we got to stay locked in. People will still be watching.”
Kelsey said he considered that his team might be playing in front of a limited audience: “With the stuff we’ve been hearing the last couple of days, it definitely didn’t shock me. It didn’t shock me at all.”
Several sports events have been affected by the threat and presence of the coronavirus. The NBA’s Golden State Warriors announced that they’d play in empty home arenas. Several conference tournaments will be played without fans.
“If you think about it, how odd is it that you’re playing in an empty arena, with millions and millions and millions of people watching,” Kelsey said. “It’s crazy.”
Perhaps this development is good news for Winthrop’s chances of advancing out of the first round. In a year when college basketball has no dominant figures at the top — and thus more first-round upsets are expected anyway — maybe the fact that there are no fans in the stands will enable an unexpected outcome.
What do you think, Coach Kelsey?
“I don’t know,” Kelsey said, his forehead crinkling. “You could look at it a bunch of different ways. A lot of times, when you go to these arenas, the underdogs get the support of the locals, so it turns into a home game for them ...
“Whatever happens, this is a tournament that they’re going to be talking about for 100 years. They probably won’t be talking about the one last year for 100 years because that one was just like the ones that came before it for the last 80 or 90 years ...
“I’m going to tell my grandchildren that we played in the tournament that no one could go to — and they won’t believe it.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 7:33 PM.
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