Why the ACC tournament won’t be canceled despite the risk of spreading coronavirus
Editor’s note: The ACC canceled its men’s basketball tournament due to the threat of the coronavirus Thursday afternoon, after this story was published. Read that story here.
ACC commissioner John Swofford met with the media Thursday morning to discuss the conference’s decision to not cancel the remaining three rounds of its tournament despite the international outbreak of COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus disease.
All remaining games, beginning with Clemson and Florida State in the quarterfinals at 12:30 p.m., will be played in front of a mostly empty Greensboro Coliseum. Only media, team family members and essential staff will be in the arena.
Wednesday night, the NBA announced the remainder of its season had been suspended until further notice.
Here are highlights of what Swofford said in his news conference:
- Right now, we are ready to tip-off for the afternoon session.
- The NBA made the decision to suspend its season once one of its players had contracted the virus, that’s not our situation.
- If a player gets the virus and we didn’t cancel the tournament, then we made the decision too late. If no one gets the virus and we cancel the tournament, we made the decision too soon.
- Our understanding and believe is playing the tournament is what players would want.
- It will be a tournament that players will remember for unusual reasons.
- I’ve been on the phone with other commissioners to discuss the situation we’re in. It’s a very fluid situation that changes daily.
- We have been in communication with local health authorities, the CDC and the NCAA. The advice we’ve been given has changed along the way and we try to make the best decisions we can based on the best information we have based on the time we get them.
- We hope the situation won’t change again before the end of the tournament, but we can’t rule that out. We want to protect anyone associated with this tournament, as well as the greater population.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 11:01 AM.
