Bohnenkamp: In Four Days, The Stories Weren't Fun Anymore
What were we talking about Sunday night?
Oh yeah, it was Iowa’s Connor McCaffery going nose-to-nose with Illinois’ Da’Monte Williams, and CJ Fredrick mixing it up with Trent Frazier, and everybody got technical fouls.
There was the Iowa wrestling team winning the Big Ten championship as the nation's top-ranked team and taking everybody to the NCAA championships.
What were we talking about Monday?
Oh yeah, Luka Garza was the Big Ten men’s basketball player of the year. That came a week after Kathleen Doyle was named the conference’s women’s basketball player of the year, a day after Spencer Lee was named the conference’s wrestler of the year.
The stories were fun. They've been fun all season.
And then there was Tuesday.
The Ivy League had called off its men’s and women’s basketball tournament because of concern over the COVID-19 coronavirus. But the Big Ten tournament was still going to be played in Indianapolis and Iowa and Illinois were lined up for a possible rematch in Friday's quarterfinals and hey, wouldn’t it be fun to see that again?
And then Wednesday came.
The NBA suspended its regular season indefinitely after a player tested positive for the coronavirus. That announcement came after the NCAA said its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments would be played without fans, and the Big Ten and other conferences would do the same things, because of the fear of a virus we knew nothing about.
Then, in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament, Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg was wiping his brow and falling ill and leaving the bench and going to the hospital, while his players were kept in the locker room until it was found out that Hoiberg tested positive for influenza A. The optics were stunning.
And then Thursday, when the Big Ten’s second-round games were to be played in a virtually empty Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Rutgers and Michigan were warming up to play and Iowa and Minnesota were getting ready to head over to the arena when suddenly the tournament was canceled and everyone was told to go home...
Exhausting paragraphs from a time period of 16 exhausting hours.
By the time Thursday ended, there were no conference tournaments anywhere, there would be no NCAA championships anywhere, and in the Big Ten, there would be no games anywhere for the rest of the academic year.
Garza making his national player of the year case on a national stage in the NCAA tournament? Not going to happen.
Doyle and the Hawkeyes playing as host to the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive season? Not going to happen.
The Iowa wrestling team, which built its season as one step after another on its way to winning a title in Minneapolis? Not going to happen.
Every senior, getting a chance to close out a career? Not going to happen.
We’re in the middle of what the World Health Organization calls a pandemic. We know numbers, but we don't know what those numbers will look like in two or three weeks.
It’s a scary time, and I can say that because I was rattled on Thursday in Indianapolis. Security guards telling you to leave one area and go to another right now, in an arena where the eerie silence is broken by an announcement that the tournament is canceled, is never comforting.
You wonder if someone got sick. You wonder if someone around you is sick.
You wonder if you’re going to get sick.
A friend who had heard the news about the tournament’s cancellation sent me a text message, asking if I was OK.
“I really don’t know,” I replied.
Kevin Warren understood the fear, understood the uncertainty. It’s why the new Big Ten commissioner sat in front of us and explained his decision.
"It’s really important to be thoughtful," he said. "If it comes down that I overreacted, or we overreacted, I’m comfortable with that. But I think as I sit here today, in these kind of situations, you can never (overreact) from a safety standpoint."
There is a sign I passed on my way home from Iowa’s game at Illinois on Sunday night. It was for a hospital, showing its wait time to get into the emergency room.
Two minutes, it said that night.
The same sign on Thursday night?
Thirty-five minutes.
In four days, the stories weren't fun anymore.
