No matter where you’re getting your NCAA Tournament info, the source is always the same. Dan Gavitt has held a morning Zoom every day this week, fielding about 25 minutes of questions.
Most of these questions are about food and COVID, as they should be. The basketball stuff can be safely left to the coaches and players, although “safely” is a loaded word in this context. Gavitt said today that about 9100 tests have been conducted in the bubble, yielding eight positive results.
He also divulged attendance allowances for all the stadia, including Farmers Coliseum. He said 1,200 people will be allowed to watch Illini/Drexel, which is 18% capacity, the highest among named venues.
People will be required to wear masks “unless someone’s eating or drinking actively,” he added.
Today, Ralph Russo asked about protests among student-athletes. Gavitt sided with the players. “Peaceful & non-disruptive” was an important qualifier in his encouragement of using their platform to advance social issues and complain about not being paid.
Gavitt made sure to trumpet the vast amount of food his organization has bought for the youngsters. The following is verbatim, and worth reading.
Or you can watch it yourself.
“Over the last four days we’ve had 161 teams order late night meals. That’s an average of 40 per night. In the first days of the controlled environment the NCAA and their corporate partners have fed 55-hundred student-athlete meals. A Wendy’s traveled in with a food truck to offer a special Biggie Bag for players; and prepared, packaged and delivered over fifteen-hundred burgers and chicken sandwiches.
“Buffalo Wild Wings fed 61 teams over the last three days, maximizing out at a whopping 19,000-plus wings on its busiest night. And over those first couple of days following Selection Sunday Pizza Hut delivered 665 pizzas, 208 family pastas and 4,365 total breadsticks. That’s a lot of food for hungry student-athletes.
“We also talked a little bit about laundry. Lowe’s has provided washers & dryers for the tournament. Over 2500 loads of wash have been done in the last couple of days, mostly practice uniforms for the teams but some team uniforms for teams that came directly from their conference tournaments as well as personal items as well (sic).
“That service will continue throughout the tournament and we’re very thankful to Lowe’s for helping us with a very fundamental operational need for the tournament.
“And finally, there is an NCAA host program through the Indiana Sports Corporation that has provided opportunity for teams and travel parties to get items that they may have forgotten or are interested in getting inside this controlled environment. So there have been deliveries on a 24-hour basis to team hotels and we have a list here that we’ll share with you but it includes such basics as toiletries and batteries and electronic equipment. But it also includes interesting things like games. Some teams ordered checkers, dominoes, soccer ball, football. Kid-sized basketball goals. A Wiffle Ball set, as I mentioned yesterday, I think. Ten balloon bouquets.
“And maybe the most interesting one to me is someone ordered a ukulele. So you can track down that story, I’m sure it’s got a great human interest angle to it.”
A spokesman for Illini basketball did not respond to ukulele inquiries.