NCAA Approves Summer Workout Plan for Men’s and Women’s Basketball To Begin in July

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Brad Underwood will soon be getting an opportunity to have full preseason basketball practices.

In a virtual meeting Wednesday afternoon, the NCAA Division I Council approved a plan for summer athletics activities for men’s and women’s basketball.

The Division I Council adopted the same summer athletics activities model for both men's and women's basketball but made an adjustment to recommended plans presented by the men’s and women’s basketball oversight committees. The plan will allow for voluntary athletics activities and up to eight hours of virtual nonphysical activities through July 19. The Council will discuss whether additional activities should be allowed in that period at a meeting within the next few weeks.

Beginning on July 20, coaches and players will conduct as much as eight weeks of physical activities per week until the school’s first day of fall semester classes, which in the case of Illinois would be Aug. 24. Required virtual nonphysical activities can continue to be conducted during this period. Virtual and in-person activities cannot also exceed a combined eight hours per week.

“The Council worked to balance the desire to get student-athletes training again with the need to repopulate our campuses and athletics facilities gradually and safely, within all campus, local and state mandates,” NCAA Division 1 Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, who is the athletics director at University of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “Student-athlete health and safety should remain a top priority.”

DI Council approves plan for men’s and women’s basketball summer activities: https://t.co/TUim2D6D88 pic.twitter.com/ydqmijdmdt
— NCAA News (@NCAA_PR) June 17, 2020

Underwood, who will be entering his fourth season as Illini head coach, has been very adamant to his wishes that his program be permitted some form of team preseason workouts in the summer after the entire spring offseason was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I don’t want to speak out of place. Summer school might be different than the fall. It may be interpreted a little bit different,” Underwood told the Champaign (Ill.) News-Gazette last month. “But I do think, yeah, you could possibly have workouts.”