Jeff Houchin Photo
As the SEC prepares for basketball season to get underway, the league had four football games postponed last week due to COVID-19 concerns. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey admitted he had concerns about basketball but also did about football, soccer, cross country and other sports.
“With what’s happening around the country with COVID rates, I think we all should be concerned. We’re all part of solving this problem together,” Sankey said. “So the reminder is we can’t function at games like we have before. And the ability to mitigate my concerns or mitigate disruption means everybody adjusts. The attention to keeping one’s health is a priority.”
Sankey said one lesson SEC officials have learned is that scheduling disruption due to COVID issues can be for multiple games and he warned the SEC men’s basketball coaches that potential disruptions could be for two weeks — meaning potentially four games having to be changed or missed.
“You want to avoid that is the right way to state it. We built in some accommodation at the end, probably, for two games max. And then you’re just going to have to deal with winning percentages where games may be lost. You’ll have to accept that disruption as a reality,” Sankey said.
That’s a message Kentucky coach John Calipari has been preaching the last two months about not to get hung up on many games individual teams play. Sankey says the SEC will just have to adjust if “meaningful disruption” occurs during basketball.
“The one reality in basketball, we do have a 14-team postseason event where you have an opportunity to compete for that tournament championship. But still you want to try to minimize disruption, accommodate adjustments. But there are limitations,” he said.
