The good news on the 2020-21 basketball season is that everybody is in the same boat.
Oregon is scheduled to begin its year on the hardwood in less than a month, but due to the pandemic, the Ducks haven’t been able to have a normal practice.
But beyond that, head coach Dana Altman has been busy juggling between getting his team ready to play and finding actual teams to play in some sort on non-conference schedule.
“We’re still waiting on some contracts, but we do have some guarenteed games where people are coming in to play us,” Altman said. “Eastern Washington, who said they would come in, Montana and Portland State, so we’re trying to get all those contracts in and getting all the wording right on the testing protocols.”
Unfortunately, the phrase “testing protocols” doesn’t mean how a player did in Chemistry 101. Players will be tested for the Coronavirus daily and even one positive test could cause a game being canceled that same day.
The Pac-12 has already canceled a football game even before the season began as the Washington-Cal game was scrapped due to a positive test on the Golden Bears program.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility to see several basketball games canceled or postponed.
“I’ve talked to the team about how the guys have to get ready because we have day-of-game testing and I don’t know how that will go,” Altman said. “It changes every week and in three weeks it may change again by the time we start our season.”
Altman did say that he was worried about his players away from the count on how they are handling the pandemic, not if they are preparing for the upcoming season.
“When we weren’t able to go in the gym, March, April, May, June, July, that was when I was really worried about out guys,” he said. “No connection, them not being to be on the floor, those guys are most comfortable when they’re on the floor.”
Although college students are resiliant, this pandemic can get to even the strongest among them. Altman noticed that once his team was able to get in the gym and shoot hoops, spirits soared.
“I’ve found that the place guys relax the most and are themselves the most is when they’re on the court,” he said. “I think that’s the one hard thing that’s been on young people is just being able to get together and follow their passion and not being able to do that.”
Something else the players will have to miss, like every other Duck fan, is football Saturdays at Autzen. Every athletic program has taken advantage of a raucous stadium atmosphere to recruit players to Eugene. That will be put on the shelf for the time being.
“I remember back in 2010, 2011, 2012 when we were trying to get it going and Chip (Kelly) had it going and those football Saturdays, we would have guys in and it’s about getting good players.” Altman said. “Those recruiting weekends are a big part of that.
“We got to get guys on campus. We recruit nationally and sometimes it’s hard to get guys to Eugene, but now we’re a little bit more established over the 10 years, which I hope has taken a little bit of pressure off those recruiting weekend since we don’t have any of them.”
Dana Altman press conference 11-5-20