How Dawn Staley, South Carolina plan to handle the isolation of NCAA’s bubble
South Carolina women’s basketball has a little bit of experience playing in a bubble.
Earlier this season, coach Dawn Staley and her Gamecocks flew to South Dakota for a Thanksgiving weekend tournament, where they were quarantined away from most of the outside world to guard against COVID-19. They played two games, and immediately after the second, Staley praised the tourney organizers for keeping everything safe and running things smoothly.
Now, nearly four months later, USC is headed back into a bubble — or in the NCAA’s words, a controlled environment — and this time, the stakes are high. National championship high, to be precise.
In order to play in the NCAA tournament, taking place entirely within the state of Texas and primarily in the San Antonio region, South Carolina is submitting to rigorous health and safety protocols, just like the other 63 teams in the field. Those started before the bracket was even revealed Monday — teams had to have seven consecutive days of negative coronavirus tests before they could travel to San Antonio.
The Gamecocks reached that milestone Monday, Staley said, and they’ll head to the Lone Star state on Tuesday morning, a far cry from their NCAA tournament preparation in previous years, when they typically hosted the first two rounds of the tourney and got to practice in their home facilities.
And once they get to San Antonio, the testing won’t stop. The Gamecocks won’t be able to leave their rooms in Texas until they register two negative COVID tests on back-to-back days. And even then, it’s not as though they’ll be free to explore the city.
“We talked a whole lot about what are we bringing, what are we packing. Every time we went on the road, it was a bubble-like setting,” Staley said. “So, it’ll probably be just heightened 10 times more, because really they don’t even want you to come out of your rooms, and everybody gets their own room.”
Indeed, NCAA guidelines call for masks at all times with the exception of practice, games, meals and when alone in hotel rooms. Teams won’t be able to have meals together except in physically distanced rooms with assigned seating. And as Staley noted, there won’t be many opportunities for socializing off the court.
“I was planning on bringing Netflix,” sophomore forward Aliyah Boston said when asked how she planned to pass the time. “If you guys have any suggestions, please, I might give you a second to just throw some out there, because I’m about to be finished with ‘Criminal Minds’ and I don’t know what else to do. So Netflix and TikTok.”
NBA players have already experienced the challenge of boredom while mostly cooped up in hotel rooms. But Staley doesn’t plan on letting her players get too lackadaisical, even when they’re apart.
“We’re going to do things that will hopefully get them in a place where that we can have a little bit of fun with them being in their rooms. Just having, you know, certain things delivered to their room — set outside their room, they open it up, it’s there. So we’re gonna do some Zooms, we’re gonna do some exercises Zooms,” Staley said.
“We’re gonna take a lot of basketballs, make sure they have balls, just to touch the balls, hold the balls, shoot the ball, dribble the balls in their rooms. Just so the quarantining part won’t be such a drag. We don’t want them lying in bed for 16 hours. We want them active and doing things and getting their minds right for what we’re faced with. So a lot of interaction will be virtually, so we will look forward to that.”
Just like the Gamecocks have that North Dakota bubble experience to fall back on, so too do they have some understanding of how to stay engaged through virtual means. Back in January, a false positive COVID test forced the team to quarantine for three days while they waited for more test results. During that time, they conducted film sessions over Zoom and stayed sharp enough to return, practice for one day and then defeat top-10 Kentucky on the road.
“Bottom line, this team wants to play, so they’re gonna do what we’re asking them to do to play the game that they love ... during the most exciting times of their college careers,” Staley said.
NEXT USC BASKETBALL GAME
What: NCAA tournament first round
Who: No. 1 seed South Carolina vs. No. 16 seed Mercer
When: 6 p.m. Sunday
Where: San Antonio, Texas
Watch: ESPN
This story was originally published March 16, 2021 at 7:30 AM.
