‘The first game back is tough.’ COVID-19 schedule disruptions difficult to handle.
Kentucky Coach John Calipari wants his team to play two earlier games that had been postponed because of positive COVID-19 tests. Those unplayed games were against South Carolina (Dec. 29) and Texas A&M (Tuesday).
“So, after we play Tuesday (of next week at Ole Miss), let’s try to have those two games in there,” Calipari said on his radio show Monday night.
The Southeastern Conference set aside the March 5-7 weekend for makeup games.
Calipari acknowledged not knowing if the two games will be played. Some SEC teams have had so many games postponed that it would be impossible to play them all. So, games that impact seeding for the SEC Tournament will be given a higher priority.
For example, Texas A&M has not played a game since Jan. 30. With Wednesday’s announcement that Saturday’s game at Missouri will not be played as scheduled, the Aggies have had eight straight SEC games postponed.
Of course, Kentucky had won three straight games before Tuesday’s postponement. That marked the team’s longest winning streak since three in a row Jan. 2-9.
Former Ole Miss Coach Andy Kennedy said that improved play makes a disruption in a schedule harder to accept.
“When you’re playing good, you want to play,” said Kennedy, now the coach at UAB (his alma mater). “Because momentum is a real thing, and momentum is hard to create and easy to lose.”
Every SEC team has had at least one game postponed or canceled. A&M is on the longest time period without a game.
Florida, which plays at Kentucky on Saturday, has had the most games postponed or canceled: nine. From the scheduled start of the season until Dec. 30, the Gators played only four games.
Kennedy noted how players and coaches prefer a familiar routine.
“When that routine is disrupted, it really throws you out of whack . . . ,” the UAB coach said.
But Kennedy cited COVID-19 as a plus in terms of conditioning people to cope with disruptions.
“You have so much uncertainty that we’re all dealing with daily,” he said. “You just kind of roll with the punches.”
Texas A&M has been all-too-familiar with routines disrupted. The combination of positive tests for COVID-19, an unusually severe winter storm of ice and snow, plus power outages reduced the number of scholarship players in some of the Aggies’ recent practices.
“It’s not really a practice if there’s only four guys,” Aggies Coach Buzz Williams said. “But we’re calling it a practice.”
A&M had four players in practices three days last week. The number grew to six on Saturday and then seven on Monday of this week.
“I think, honestly, we got a little better at trying to figure out what it was we could do to be efficient,” the A&M coach said. “. . . With each passing day, we got a little better.”
As a plus, Williams said the players able to practice improved their cardiovascular fitness.
Williams added that he’s tried to consult with other coaches who have had to put team activities on a pause. He said a “selfish” motive led him to talk to the coaches and take notes.
“I wanted to learn what led to their pause and hope we could prevent it,” he said. “And then the second thing was I wanted to learn what they did to make it the best they could.”
On an Atlantic Coast Conference teleconference, Louisville Coach Chris Mack said that riding a stationary bicycle or working out on an elliptical machine was a poor way to maintain basketball conditioning.
“You actually have to get on the basketball court, reacting, catching your breath, changing ends of the floor, thinking,” he said. “It becomes a whole different game. So it’s a huge challenge.
“You also have the challenge of just a lack of repetitions (and) lack of continuity practice to practice of just building a team.”
Clemson Coach Brad Brownell spoke of players’ backs tightening up in practices when they haven’t been in a defensive stance for a week or more.
Kentucky has had five games either postponed or canceled. Besides South Carolina and A&M, UK did not play Texas (Jan. 30) and Detroit Mercy twice (Nov. 27 and rescheduled for Dec. 15).
Coincidentally or not, Kentucky has lost three of its first four games after the earlier unplanned pauses.
“The first game back is tough,” said Wake Forest Coach Steve Forbes, who added that it can take a week or two “to get the rhythm back (and) being connected on defense.”
Earlier this season, Wake Forest had five straight games canceled or postponed. That led to no games for more than a month (from Nov. 28 to Dec. 31).
The Demon Deacons beat Catawba 70-62 in their first game after the pause, then lost six straight.
“Basketball is such a timing sport,” Forbes said. “That’s why . . . we try to play games to continue having rhythm.”
Next game
Florida at Kentucky
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
TV: CBS-27
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Florida 11-6 (7-5 SEC), Kentucky 8-13 (7-7)
Series: Kentucky leads 105-40.
Last meeting: Kentucky won 76-58 on Jan. 9, 2021, in Gainesville, Fla.
This story was originally published February 24, 2021 at 12:13 PM.
