Syracuse Basketball: Hard to imagine the 2020-21 season starting on time
By Neil Adler
The NCAA will give an update in a month about the Syracuse basketball 2020-21 stanza, but don’t expect the season to begin without a delay.
The NCAA in about a month will provide an update on whether the Syracuse basketball 2020-21 term will begin on time, but with the way things are going in the collegiate-sports world amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, it seems fairly likely that the hoops’ schedule will get delayed.
Division I fall sports other than FBS football are not expected to conduct their championships in the coming months and may move to the spring, according to an NCAA announcement, and the 2020 football campaign for Syracuse, its Atlantic Coast Conference counterparts, and other Power Five leagues remains a huge question mark.
As such, to expect that college basketball will start as planned on Nov. 10 is probably a tad unrealistic. Then again, hoops has a bit of time to see how the pandemic continues to play out across the country, whereas football is supposed to get going next month.
Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, said in a statement released by the organization that by the middle of September, “we will provide direction about whether the season and practice start on time or a short-term delay is necessitated by the ongoing pandemic.”
He also notes that NCAA officials have “developed and studied contingency plans for alternatives to the scheduled Nov. 10 start date,” although the press statement doesn’t offer further details about these potential different options to kicking off the 2020-21 campaign as originally scheduled on Nov. 10.
In the coming weeks, Gavitt says, he and the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball oversight committees will work together to finalize any possible recommendations that the NCAA Division I Council should consider as it relates to the beginning of the 2020-21 stanza.
"More comments from Gavitt. “We recognize that we are living and operating in an uncertain time, and it is likely that mid-September will be just the first milestone for many important decisions pertaining to the regular season and the NCAA basketball championships. While circumstances may warrant flexibility resulting in a different and perhaps imperfect season, the ultimate goal is to safely provide student-athletes and teams with a great college basketball experience.”"
I’ve gone on record in saying that if eliminating the non-conference docket for Syracuse basketball and its peers around the country helps enable a term to get played, I’m in favor of it.
Orange head coach Jim Boeheim has said that he believes delaying the 2020-21 season until early next year is not the right move. I don’t necessarily disagree with him, although the likelihood that the upcoming hoops campaign commences on time isn’t looking so good.