The Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament has been cancelled and Florida State University, the winner of the regular season has been named the ACC champions.
An indication of how fast moving these decisions on how to deal with the coronavirus are being made is that at 9:34 a.m. ACC Commissioner John Swofford when asked in a television interview if ACC was going to be playing basketball today, said, “Yes, we are.”
Swofford then went into some detail about how the tournament would be played, saying that each team would get 150 tickets for players, coaches, and families. He said that if the school wanted to include cheerleaders and pep bands they could do that.
Swofford said, “We want this to be the best experience that it can be for the players.”
When asked if they had discussed not playing the tournament, Swofford said, “Not really, very briefly.”
He added, “We all felt we wanted to have the opportunity for our players to play.”
But things are moving fast and with players warming up for the first game.
Swofford went out on the floor and said, “After a recent discussion of about 15 minutes ago with our presidents and athletic directors again the league has made a decision to end this year’s Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament as of today.
“It’s tough to say those words for these young men on the floor that would be continuing to play. It’s tough to say those words for you fans in the stands but we believe it’s the right decision to make at this particular point in time. You can ask why was it not made sooner. It is a fair question and the answer is that it is an extraordinarily fluid situation with information coming to us that changes I used to say changes by the week then I said by the day and now I say by the hour.”
Swofford then announced that Florida State would be declared the winner and awarded the trophy to Florida State.
The tournament was officially cancelled with an announcement that went out at 12:14 p.m.
