It was, thankfully, only a footnote to perhaps the biggest news from the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
And for that, we should be eternally grateful.
Because, in retrospect, this had the potential to become one of the most painful sports stories ever to come out of the area.
Last Saturday, VCU was dealt a devastating blow when, mere hours before tip, it was forced to bow out of its first round NCAA matchup with Oregon, thereby ending its season, due to multiple positive COVID-19 tests within its Tier 1 personnel.
It was impossible not to feel absolutely dreadful for the Rams. A year ago, when the entire tournament was canceled, one could at least take solace in the fact that everyone was suffering the same fate together. In this instance (and through the Round of 32), VCU was the only team of 68 to have the metaphorical rug pulled out from under it.
And though there was a fair amount of jawing between the two fanbases in two regular-season matchups and before the Atlantic 10 title game, there likely wasn’t a single St. Bonaventure follower who wouldn’t have been pulling for Mike Rhoades’ Rams in the Big Dance.
Where it becomes even more jarring, however, is how VCU ended up in that situation … and just how close it might have been to affecting Bona.
NOW, some of this, admittedly, is stemming from pure speculation — the source of VCU’s positive cases hasn’t and likely won’t be publicly revealed. But much of that speculation is based in fact.
Days earlier, Roger Ayers, an ACC official, was one of six referees sent home from Indianapolis after Ayers himself tested positive (and was exposed to those five colleagues), according to multiple news stories. Ayers, by chance, was also one of the officials for the A-10 title contest between Bona and VCU just one day before.
The common belief is that VCU’s positives stemmed from its interaction with Ayers that Sunday in Dayton. So why didn’t the Bonnies end up suffering the same fate before their game against LSU?
Did they just get lucky? Perhaps.
Did their positives not come back until after that contest had been played? That’s also a possibility. The truth is we’ll probably never know how and why that situation unfolded the way it did.
It’s also plausible, though, that Bona was saved by its own previous exposure to the virus.
COACH Mark Schmidt’s team, remember, was forced to pause at the start of the season, from Nov. 19 through the first week of December, due to multiple positive tests within its Tier 1 personnel. VCU never had to endure an in-house COVID-related delay (it actually almost got an entire season in, playing 26 games).
At the time, of course, it was a stomach-punch setback to a Bona program teeming with expectations for 2020-21. The Bonnies had to cancel their four season-opening games at the “Bubbleville” event in Connecticut. They had to go without nearly three weeks of practice and game time. They went from being scheduled to open the entire Division I season — Bona was going to play Towson at 9 a.m. on Thanksgiving Eve — to one of the last teams to get their first game in.
It was a disastrous start that seemed to forbode the season that lay ahead.
In the end, however, VCU, as terribly unlucky as it was, perhaps left more vulnerable by how unscathed it went throughout the regular year, has a fateful encounter with an official (or otherwise) that leads to multiple positive tests and the absolute gutting end to an at-large season.
Bona, with an unconfirmed number of team personnel having already had COVID-19 and perhaps possessing the antibodies to fight against another exposure, has relatively the same experience in Dayton (and both teams went straight to the Indiana bubble afterward) and is able to play its game against LSU, just a few hours before VCU was scheduled to meet Oregon.
FOR AS crazy as it is to consider, that season-opening pause might actually have been a blessing in disguise.
By the time this came to light on Saturday evening, it almost didn’t matter that the Bonnies had lost their first-round NCAA game by 15. What mattered more, in a time where the pandemic is still causing problems, is that Bona had successfully made it to this point at all, that — in whatever way it happened — it was able to avoid what would have been one of the most unfortunate days in program history.
In 1970, a medical issue — the knee injury suffered by Bob Lanier in a regional final against Villanova — led to an unwanted end for Bona in the NCAA Tournament. Fifty-one years later, oddly, a medical issue may have actually allowed it to play.
And in the end, its season ended where it should have: on a court in Indiana.
(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)
