SEC, Other Conferences Cancel Basketball Conference Tournaments Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
The SEC and the other big conferences in college sports have now all canceled their basketball tournaments because of the coronavirus, putting the celebrated NCAA March Madness Tournament in doubt.
The Power 5 conferences are the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and the Southeastern Conference. Within minutes of each other, they announced that the remainder of their tournaments would not be played.
All had been preparing to play games in large arenas, but with few people in the buildings.
The SEC said that based on the continued spread of the coronavirus, the remainder of the 2020 Men’s Basketball Tournament in Nashville would be canceled.
“We understand that this decision will be disappointing to our student-athletes and coaches who have been preparing all season to compete in this event as well as viewers at home,” said SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. “While this was not an easy decision, the health and well-being of our entire SEC community is of paramount importance.”
The SEC’s regular season champion, the University of Kentucky, will be awarded the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Following the NCAA’s lead on Wednesday, most college conferences announced that their basketball tournaments would be conducted with limited fan access. By today, after the NBA suspended its season Wednesday night, several Division I conferences decided not to play at all.
(Copyright 2020 The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.)
