MAAC tournament canceled due to Coronavirus pandemic

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Following the unprecedented move by almost every other college basketball conference to cancel its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments within the past 24 hours due to the increasing Coronavirus pandemic, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference has officially preempted its 2020 Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships, which had begun Tuesday at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall.

“It’s a tough day in sports as this country faces a major crisis,” MAAC commissioner Rich Ensor said, announcing the halt of the first postseason tournaments to be played in Atlantic City, which will host the MAAC again in 2021 and 2022. “The season has been canceled, the tournament has been canceled, effective immediately.”

“We had two conference calls today with the MAAC Council of Presidents and one with our MAAC committee on athletic administration. They were difficult conversations, but we’re all in the business of protecting our student-athletes, but also providing them the opportunity to succeed. It’s really a blow for us all to have to cancel this.”

In addition to basketball, Ensor also announced the MAAC would cancel all spring sports competitions, effective Friday morning, in a vote that was unanimous among the presidents of the eleven MAAC institutions. Should the NCAA Tournament be played, a fluid situation at the moment, the regular season champions — Siena for men’s basketball, Rider for women’s basketball — would represent the MAAC in the fields of 68 and 64, respectively. When asked if the en masse decisions by high-major conferences played a role in the MAAC ultimately deciding to follow suit, Ensor admitted that because of the lack of opportunities for multiple bids out of the MAAC, he and the conference were committed to letting the action play out as long as possible before being swept up in the tidal wave of a health scare that has enveloped not only college basketball, but all sports worldwide.

“It’s a growing crisis, and one that’s impacting college sports at its prime time of the year,” the commissioner admitted. “I think we were waiting for feedback from the NCAA on what they were doing, and taking our cues from their direction. But I think when you add in the cancellation of Major League Baseball, the NHL, the NBA, all that going on, I think there’s a rightful concern. We don’t know the scope of this pandemic that’s underway, but we certainly want to protect our student-athletes, we want to maintain — to the extent we could, as long as we could — the opportunity for them to earn it on the floor, but events just overtook us.”

“It’s a little different in the mid-major world — this is no knock on my friend, Val Ackerman — but the Big East is going to get six or seven teams in the field if we have a tournament. We have one automatic qualifier, so we were trying to resist as long as possible the outcome we came to today, so that we could learn everything on the floor. Coming into the week, I really thought we probably had ten days before this really got to this point, but we didn’t have that luxury in the tournament.”

Ensor later stated there were informal staff discussions about a potential shutdown prior to the first set of games Tuesday, but nothing was finalized and no protocol had been put into place until the commissioner was able to speak to every administration to inform them of the rising confluence of events. As far as the group of graduating seniors who may never suit up again in a collegiate uniform, he was extremely sympathetic.

“Personally, I regret having to do this,” he said. “And I share their pain.”

Siena head men’s basketball coach Carmen Maciariello, whose Saints were regular season MAAC champions and would represent the conference in the NCAA Tournament, should there be one, also weighed in on the day’s turn of events.

“Obviously, it’s disappointing, but we always want to look at the broader picture and what’s best for our student-athletes,” he said. “Safety and health is of the most importance.”

“I didn’t think there was any way it was going to be played. When you see the Atlantic 10 and the Big Ten, and all these other conferences canceling, you’re just kind of waiting. It starts the snowball rolling, and it started to go with Rudy Gobert last night in the NBA, the cancellation of Major League Baseball...I guess the positive of this stuff coming out on social media is it gets you aware and ready for when it’s going to happen to you and your conference. It’s a fact of life and you’ve got to deal with it, and it’s a good life lesson for these guys to learn from. It’s tough. No one wants to go through this, but those obstacles are what grow you as an individual. It’s all positive.”