LAS VEGAS — Less than 24 hours after winning a Pac-12 Tournament game in a manner suggesting a long March run might be possible after all, the Arizona Wildcats found out it wasn’t.
For anybody.
The Pac-12 canceled the rest of its tournament at 9:17 a.m. Thursday, following the path of several other conferences. Hours later, the NCAA announced it was suspending all winter and spring sports championships because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Boom. No NCAA tournaments, men’s or women’s. No UA men’s team to try to prove itself at a first-round site somewhere. No Wildcats women’s team hosting games at McKale Center and building on the excitement they have created for over a year now.
Just March Sadness. For everyone.
“It’s almost disbelief,” Arizona center Chase Jeter said Thursday afternoon before he boarded the Wildcats’ near-empty bus back to Tucson from Las Vegas. “I don’t think any of us could have ever predicted this. I don’t know. I don’t know how to react. I never pictured my college basketball experience ending because of something like this.”
Still, Jeter and several Arizona officials were supportive of the decision, especially after the Colonial Athletic Association announced that an official working one of its tournament games tested positive for the virus — meaning his handling of the ball could have affected everyone on the floor.
“At the end of the day I think they want to do what’s right for everyone,” said Ryan Reynolds, the UA’s director of basketball operations, of the key decision-makers. “Especially for the student-athletes: It would be a terrible thing if a whole bunch of them got it.”
But the speed of the news, getting worse since the Wildcats beat Washington 77-70 on Wednesday afternoon, drilled an awful pit in their stomachs.
“The past 24 hours have felt like a bad dream,” UA guard Nico Mannion tweeted between the Pac-12 and NCAA announcements.
“Can’t believe our season just ended like this,” center Christian Koloko tweeted.
And there was Jeter, saying the whole thing was just “a whirlwind.”
First, there was the Pac-12’s announcement Wednesday evening that it would play the rest of its tournament games without fans present. Then, just as the Wildcats were preparing for a pregame shootaround Thursday morning, they were told the rest of the Pac-12 Tournament would be canceled.
Still, they had reason to believe that the NCAA Tournament was still happening. On that note, UA coach Sean Miller caught a ride home on a booster’s plane.
“Coach kind of left it like ‘Hey, we’re planning on going to the tournament and nothing’s changed; we have to proceed as normal,’” UA associate head coach Jack Murphy said just before UA’s bus left at 3 p.m. “So when we got the news a short time ago that the tournament’s not going to happen, obviously, that puts a damper on things.”
The same feeling enveloped the UA women’s team, maybe even more so considering the promise the Wildcats showed while going 24-7 and appearing to have earned the right to host first-weekend NCAA Tournament games at McKale Center.
“Devastating!” UA coach Adia Barnes tweeted at 1:52 p.m., adding 10 minutes later: “I just had to tell my team that our season is over. Just like that. We worked so hard. We were getting ready to host in the NCAA Tourney. We had not been there in 15 years.”
With that, Barnes added a broken heart emoji.
The UA men had lost four of their final six games but were firing on many cylinders in those two wins, beating Washington State 83-62 on March 5 at McKale Center and Washington 77-70 in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament on Wednesday. Freshman Josh Green led their balanced offensive attack, and the Wildcats held Washington to just 3-for-23 3-point shooting on the other end.
“I think yesterday was the first time where you felt like we had everybody back together playing and Josh back in rhythm,” Murphy said. “I thought it was really good. So it’s one of those things where the sky was the limit for our team. We were excited and looking forward to the challenge but unfortunately that’s … that’s not gonna happen.”
On top of the disappointment came difficult logistics.
The Wildcats reserved tentative flights home on Friday night, in case they lost Thursday or Friday, and on Saturday night, in case they reached the championship game. But a charter could not be arranged on a last-minute basis Thursday.
Reynolds said the Pac-12 redirected the bus the Wildcats were taking to T-Mobile Arena on Thursday to go all the way back to McKale Center.
“Although Tucson isn’t a close drive, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility,” Reynolds said. “It was just a matter of getting a driver who could do it.”
As it turned out only five players actually took the bus home: Jeter, Green, Mannion, freshman center Zeke Nnaji and forward Ira Lee. The rest of the players scattered with their families, since UA is on what is now an extended spring break, with classes not starting until Wednesday.
Jeter and forward Jake DesJardins are from Southern Nevada, though Jeter said he was going back to Tucson anyway, and half of the active playing roster is from Southern California.
“I think a big part of with the parents is you don’t know what’s going on with this whole thing, so you might want to have your kids at your house,” Reynolds said.
So just the five players, three assistant coaches and staffers boarded the bus for a seven-hour ride.
A seven-hour ride that had the potential to feel like forever.
“I feel bad for the guys,” UA assistant director of equipment operations Brian Brigger said. “The seniors, guys like Stone Gettings (a grad transfer) not getting to the (NCAA) Tournament. And look at what our women’s program has gone through – they’ve had a great year. I feel bad for our senior managers, too. They put in all that work and all of a sudden, they’re done.
“You know, in years past, you’d lose tournament games and you’re done. But now everybody’s going through the same thing.”
