Syracuse Basketball: ‘Season will be destroyed’ if protocols aren’t adjusted

Syracuse basketball head coach Jim Boeheim speaks candidly about the 2020-21 term amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Following the Syracuse basketball one-point victory over Bryant on Friday afternoon in Central New York, Orange head coach Jim Boeheim was upfront in his assessment of the quarantine protocols from the NCAA and the conferences that govern collegiate-hoops teams like the ‘Cuse.

During the novel coronavirus pandemic, Boeheim noted that when he and one other member of the Syracuse basketball program tested positive for Covid-19, everyone on the squad had to quarantine for 14 days.

That meant the Orange only got to practice once over the past two weeks, on Thanksgiving, before the ‘Cuse suited up in its 2020-21 season opener against the Bulldogs from the Carrier Dome. Syracuse basketball was understandably rusty and had to claw back from a 13-point, second-half deficit to escape with an 85-84 triumph.

Syracuse basketball head coach Jim Boeheim is concerned about the current quarantine protocols in college hoops.

Orange players, coaches and staff members are wearing devices that alert them when they reside within six feet of one other. In the post-game press conference after the conquest of Bryant, Boeheim said that he’s not near one of his players for more than 1 minute, 30 seconds, during the entire practice.

So Boeheim then wonders why the entire team would not have the ability to practice, even if Boeheim himself tested positive. “This makes no sense,” he said, adding that these quarantine protocols should be based on science, “not generalizations.”

Quarantine protocols and contact tracing need to change, otherwise, if an entire team has to quarantine for 14 days, it could miss four to five games that won’t get made up, Boeheim notes.

Then how do you get ready to play a squad like Duke or the many other excellent teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference with only one or two practices available? That is “physically impossible,” Boeheim said.

Unless this is sorted out now, he said, the 2020-21 season “will be destroyed. Period.”