The NCAA has announced some of their contingency plans for the NCAA Tournament. They have really considered a lot of things to attempt to have a full tournament – here is a summary based on my understanding of their release:

The NCAA basketball committee is going to do their best to enter the tournament with a full 68 team field. They plan to follow certain procedures once they have announced the initial bracket on Sunday, March 14th.

• Once brackets are released, teams will not be reseeded and the structure of the bracket will not change.
• The deadline for replacing a team that can not play due to coronavirus protocols is Tuesday, March 16th at 6 pm EST
• Once the tournament has begun, no team will replace another that has a COVID-19 issue. Its opponent would simply advance to the next round via the no-contest rule
• If a team can not participate and is identified before the deadline, a replacement team will take their place in the bracket.
• For any single-bid conference, the league may replace its automatic qualifier if it is unable to participate with the league’s preapproved contingency replacement team
• The first four teams that do not receive an at-large bid will be ranked from 1-4 and will be taken from that list in that order to replace any team from a multiple-bid conference that can not participate
• If those first four teams do not get used to replace a team, they will remain the #1 seeds in the NIT that starts on March 17th.

If this ends up being the case, it should be easy to handle for the Lunatic contest. If the team gets replaced, it will look exactly like what happens when we pick one the First Four teams. You are basically picking the team that was in that seed of the bracket to win – regardless of who it is. If the team can not participate after the tournament starts, since their opponent will advance in the bracket, we will treat it as if they won the game.

I think this all looks like good news – because it looks like the NCAA is really committed to having a basketball tournament. And having college basketball in March is a good thing. I hope all the protocols they have in place will keep the players safe, and that they have an awesome tournament!!!!