News On The Horizon 9/8/2020

She's back: Former UWGB star Mehryn Kraker hired as assistant--Green Bay Press Gazette
Borseth Adds Former Phoenix Standout Mehryn Kraker to Coaching Staff--greenbayphoenix.com

#TIDBITTUESDAY: FAVORITE ATHLETE & TEAM EDITION--iupuijags.com

'Nothing normal about it': Questions persist about college basketball during a pandemic--Post-Gazette

Though Gavitt has assured there will be a tournament this year, the impact of not having it in consecutive years, should it get to that dire point, would be cataclysmic.

“That would be the doomsday scenario,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said.

In the meantime, coaches have tried to proceed as normally as they can. All three men’s teams were back on their respective campuses by mid-July and were participating in workouts, most of which were limited to weightlifting, conditioning and individual skill work. As they see it, there’s only so much influence they have when it comes to how a college basketball season will proceed — and even less input when it comes to the prevalence of COVID-19 in the United States and across the world — so constantly worrying about what might happen becomes more of a burden than a useful exercise.

For Toole, whose team qualified for the NCAA tournament last season only to see the event get canceled two days later, Robert Morris missing out on that opportunity in back-to-back seasons would be devastating.

“The way the season ended last year was a hard blow for us,” Toole said. “To come back and there was a scenario where we didn’t have a season, that would be a lot, a lot for guys to handle. It’s something most of them have done for decades. They’ve had basketball season in the winter. They’ve been part of a team. Our guys are pretty mature in understanding that a lot of this stuff is certainly outside of our control and that everybody is trying to do the best they can to get them on the court. But that would be the biggest thing — how do you bounce back from that?”