Colorado State Coach Niko Medved, whose team finished 18-6, 14-4 in the Mountain West Conference, told reporters on Sunday that he did not believe the N.C.A.A. tournament would end up needing one replacement team, never mind two.
“You want to be in March Madness,” Adam Thistlewood, a junior forward for Colorado State, said to The Denver Post. “But we can’t dwell on that. We’ve got to focus on the N.I.T. coming up.”
St. Louis Coach Travis Ford, whose team was on the bubble after finishing 14-6, 6-4 in the Atlantic 10 Conference, told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he prepared his team for the seeming inevitability of playing their first game of the N.I.T. on Saturday.
“They knew and seemed disappointed, but I couldn’t see any real emotion,” he said.
A spokesman for Mississippi said the team would be prepared to travel to Indianapolis if it was chosen, but otherwise would look forward to the N.I.T.
Kansas and Virginia withdrew from their conference tournaments after positive tests for the coronavirus associated with tier-1 personnel in the program. Both teams must have seven consecutive days of negative tests before their arrival and then two negative P.C.R. tests upon arrival at least 12 hours apart with individual hotel room quarantine between tests in order to play, Dan Gavitt, the N.C.A.A. senior vice president for basketball, said Monday. The seven-test protocol also includes people in each team’s travel party of a maximum 34 people. Each team needs only five eligible players to participate, making it less likely that any replacement team will get the call.
Virginia Coach Tony Bennett said most of his team would remain in quarantine until Thursday because of contact tracing. The Cavaliers, the No. 4 seed in the West Region, will not travel to Indiana until Friday and will still need to have two days of negative tests before their game Saturday night with No. 13 Ohio. The N.C.A.A. essentially made Virginia an exception after initially saying teams had to arrive no later than Monday night, Gavitt said.
“They, like every single team and every individual here, will have seven days of negative tests,” Gavitt said. “It absolutely is a requirement. Had that not been able to happen, they would not have been able to participate in the tournament.”
