With Monday's announcement that the MIAC has postponed all sports until January because of the coronavirus pandemic, attention now turns to winter sports. Specifically, how will the schedules for basketball and hockey look?
"It's yet to be determined,'' MIAC Commissioner Dan McKane said Tuesday. "Over the next several weeks we're going to enter into those conversations and pave the path forward to what January and February and maybe even March might look like. We haven't determined anything except we're not going to play through the end of December.''
The men's and women's hockey seasons were scheduled to begin Oct. 30, and the basketball schedules were to tip off Nov. 6. Now, it's unclear if the MIAC will return in January with conference-only play or if some nonconference games can be worked into the schedules.
McKane expects the NCAA to decide the fate of winter sports by the end of September. He sees three options: keep the schedule anchored to when the NCAA championships are slated, push the championships further back, or cancel winter sports.
"There's really three paths,'' McKane said. "Once we know which one, we'll be able to make our decision on what's best for us — whether it's just conference games or nonconference included in there. It's going to look different somehow.''
McKane expressed concern about how a compressed schedule might impact student-athletes.
"What we have to do is say, 'Is it OK for basketball to play three games per week for two months?' '' he said. "I'm not sure that's what we want from a health and safety standpoint during a pandemic even though our coaches would say, 'Pedal to the metal. Let's go.' We have to really take a look at that health and safety piece. Is the travel OK, and is it OK for our bodies to play that many games in a short period of time? We'll see what our membership ultimately says.''
Division I college hockey coaches are encouraging the NCAA to push back the Frozen Four to later in the spring. McKane sees that as an option for basketball and hockey schedules in Division III.
"It's possible,'' he said. "I don't know if it will actually happen, but I think there's an opportunity there. … I know our coaches want to play, and they want to play as much as possible.''
