Florida Gators have officially been ruled out of the ‘Bubbleville‘ at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. This came after the team revealed that they will be shutting their practice facility after a whole host of positive tests in their program.
The players are currently quarantined and the facility will stay shut for the next seven days.
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— Florida Gators Men’s Basketball (@GatorsMBK) November 22, 2020
This has negatively impacted the NCAA ‘Bubbleville’. The Gators are unranked this year but are still a big name in college basketball.
They were scheduled to face the Virginia Cavaliers in their season opener. This issue is also going to affect their second game against UMass-Lowell River Hawks.
Bubbleville is stacked with other big games, but the issue that this raises is different. Considering the scale of the pandemic still around, NCAA Basketball will face issues throughout the year.
While we have seen college football manage it, it hasn’t been without its fair share of hiccups.
Florida Gators: Where do they go from here?
A COVID-19 breakout is possibly the worst thing that can happen to any locker room right now. Most players do not fall sick, but the precautions to ensure they don’t communicate the disease to others are essential.
But this is leading to other issues. Many of the athletes lose weeks of training time because they are spending it in quarantine. This will naturally affect their performance whenever they return to court.
Team schedules can sometimes become a massive issue whenever this happens. Many teams are trying to face colleges that are in nearby areas all at once.
If one of those teams is not available to play the game, a different date with more travel needs to be set to re-run it. Otherwise, you can cancel the game completely, but the merits of the league standings will come into question.
Regular season basketball in the NCAA isn’t that important outside developing the players and seeing which team can upset their way to March Madness. However, the tournament anyway doesn’t look likely for March and the NCAA need to do their due diligence.
Hopefully, the season can go smoothly and the Gators can rebound from this early issue, like many other teams have had to.
