NCAA Cancels All Winter & Spring Championships; Big East Cancels All Spring Sports

In the wake of the remaining basketball conference tournaments cancelling their events due to concerns about COVID-19, the NCAA has stepped in as well to bring finality and decisiveness to speculation about what would happen with the national championship tournaments for men’s and women’s basketball. Smartly, the NCAA went an extra step further past the previous announcement that the events would transpire without fans in attendance and has cancelled the 2020 men’s and women’s basketball national championship tournaments.

In addition to that, the NCAA went ahead and cancelled all remaining winter sports championships that they host, as well as all spring sports championships. In concurrence with that, the Big East has announced that they have cancelled all spring sports competitions. Just so we’re 100% clear on this, Marquette’s press release on this topic spells it out very distinctly: There will be no more Marquette athletic competitions of any kind for the 2019-20 school year, and the athletics calendar has officially concluded. Lacrosse, golf, tennis, and track & field are all finished for the year.

It was only a matter of time before the basketball tournaments were cancelled after the conference tournaments were cancelled. It was the only logical end point for things at this point. If you extrapolate outwards from the idea that there was no way to postpone or delay the basketball tournament, then there was no way to keep the spring sports seasons active either. We’re only about five weeks away from the conclusion of the regular season for men’s and women’s lacrosse. There’s only a month left in the men’s and women’s tennis schedules. On top of that, Marquette has already told students that they won’t be allowed back in the res halls until April 10th. That kind of puts a damper on the ability for any spring sports at Marquette to run practices between now and then, and at that point, why are you trying to fit in what’s left of the season, and why would the Big East have any interest in continuing through to their championships? Plus, if there’s no NCAA championship to move onwards into, what’s the point of holding a conference championship in golf and tennis?

It’s a super bummer for this here internet website, as we’re awfully fond of Marquette’s spring sports. Not only is Marquette pretty good at them, but if we’re being honest about it, they help fill the time in between the end of basketball and the start of soccer and volleyball. However, all of this is the smartest and best decision for the health and safety of the largest number of people. It’s a little absurd to even think that you could try to have any kind of athletic event when health organizations around the country are recommending that gatherings north of 100 people are unsafe due to the increased likelihood of transmission of the coronavirus. So while it might be a little quieter than normal around Anonymous Eagle for the months of April and May, we’ll figure out a way to get through it one way or another.

Offseason evil. Must be destroyed.

This stinks.