Obviously this came out during work earlier today but at least wanted to provide an update as the MIAC President's Council officially gave the go-ahead for winter sports - including women's basketball - today. You can view the story from the MIAC's website: https://miac.prestosports.com/general/2020-21/releases/20210112lfbdy1
The first thing that stuck out to me in the story was that there will not be having the usual playoff format that it's had in "normal" seasons since 2001. As I understand it, both basketball and hockey schedules will follow a single round-robin format where each participating team will play every other team once and the team achieving the best winning percentage while completing at least 51 percent of the schedule will claim the MIAC championship and the automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament that goes with it.
Regular season games will begin on Saturday (2-6) at 2:00 P.M. with Wednesday evening games beginning at 7:00 P.M. Interestingly, the teams that have opted out of conference play are permitted to compete in non-conference competition during the NCAA-approved competition window. Also, the teams that do not compete this season may continue to participate in practices, strength and conditioning along with skill development and leadership programming. Presumably this would include the schools that have opted out this year - Carleton, St. Olaf, Macalester and St. Kate's. One other item of note: With the NCAA blanket waiver that was issued back in October, student-athletes may compete up to the established dates of the competition window without being charged a season of intercollegiate participation during the 2020-21 academic year.
Sound confusing? I don't know.....I've gotta tell you. I've got a lot of mixed feelings about all this. Don't get me wrong - I'm very glad that the student-athletes of the participating schools get a chance to do what they do and all the guidelines and protocols have been meticulously laid out by the conference so, given the environment that we're currently dealing with, that's definitely a good thing. On the other hand, there just seems to be something incredibly empty about the whole thing (and I'm not talking about the no-spectator policy which I'm completely fine with). To me, it almost seems like the conference and the member schools that are participating are going into this thing well-armed but yet at the same time incredibly vulnerable which I have to admit gives me pause for concern here. I've covered two NSIC games online thus far and already that conference has been peppered with cancellations with no chance of any make-up. There's just so much uncertainty here and I really hate that. I almost wish that the season could simply be pushed back into the spring when we might have a chance for these new vaccines to really take hold. I think that, in the end, when this season does (hopefully) get completed, there'll be kind of an empty feeling about the whole thing and how much the "championship" - whoever gets it - will really mean. But that's just me.
As always, do feel free to fire away with thoughts.
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