It's taken 70 days for Xavier University's men's basketball team to play 13 games and the future remains uncertain as it's become increasingly difficult to stay on the floor for any sort of continuity.
The 2020-21 college basketball season has been different and difficult. The COVID-19 pandemic has made sure of that.
Problems can compound quickly, and pretty soon the process starts to resemble a web.
The Musketeers have found their way to the center of that web, and it's proven quite difficult to escape.
Xavier announced Monday its third in-season COVID-19 pause – not even 48 hours after the Musketeers ended their previous 20-day pause with a 68-55 win over Butler on Saturday.
Xavier head coach Travis Steele found out on Sunday about a positive COVID-19 test from a Tier 1 member of the Musketeers' program, and on Tuesday, two additional tests came up positive, one of which was a scholarship player, Steele told The Enquirer.
"The 20-day break was really long, then you play a game and you're done again," said Steele. "We've had like six practices in over a month and we played three games in the month of January. It's hard to get better because there are teams out there that are getting better right now, and to get better you've got to play games and you've got to practice."
With its next two games (at DePaul and Villanova) already postponed this week, that leaves nearly all of Xavier's roster in quarantine with the exception of two players.
"We have two guys that are within the 90-day threshold that have gotten it within the last 90 days," said Steele. "Those two young men are allowed to work out, lift, go to class, they're allowed to be out and about."
Everyone else, though, is stuck in quarantine.
Steele said he doesn't know yet when the team will be able to resume practices.
"I think it depends on how far this potential outbreak could go, right?" said Steele. "We're hopeful we'll be able to get back up and running next Wednesday, maybe, if everything goes smooth between now and then."
The Musketeers are scheduled to host DePaul next Thursday on February 11.
As for if that game is also in danger of being postponed if Xavier can't resume practice until the day before, Steele said, "We would probably try to play it," as long as there are no setbacks in returning to team activities.
The current situation the Musketeers find themselves in is the situation Steele was worried about back in the summer.
Xavier was fortunate leading up to this season in how few COVID cases it had among the program. Only a handful of positive tests popped up before the season among the Tier 1 sector – which includes student-athletes, coaches, medical and support staff – but as of this most recent pause, Steele said the Musketeers still have a lot of players and key members of the program who haven't tested positive, and each one of those is a potential pause waiting to happen.
Xavier hasn't had a big outbreak where six or seven guys have tested positive together. The Musketeers' exposure to COVID has been isolated, a case here and there, not widespread throughout the program.
"It's scary. I knew this was coming," said Steele. "I could see it a mile away back in July when we started talking about all the protocols. I thought we would have had more cases by now because we're on a college campus, but as the first semester went on and into the winter break, we didn't have many.
"You don't want to get it but it's almost unavoidable. It's a question of when you're gonna get it. It's scary for our team because I think we have a clear NCAA Tournament-level team."
The protocols the Big East Conference has implemented are, in some cases, very different than how other conferences and schools are handling the pandemic.
"For example, we played Oklahoma this year," said Steele. "They get two positive (COVID) tests and they keep playing, they don't shut down at all. It's frustrating. Even teams that are playing right now are having issues with it, they just may operate very differently than what we do."
The environment college basketball is played in isn't a protective bubble. It requires travel and close contact, some of which happens without masks during practices and games, and for Xavier, a program that hasn't been deeply immersed in the coronavirus, it makes the remainder of this season a little like navigating a minefield.
The Musketeers have to operate under the assumption that they aren't out of the woods with more pauses and interruptions.
"It's the elephant in the room for us but we can't control it," said Steele. "That's the hard part. Our guys have made a lot of sacrifices ... and I told our guys yesterday, the best part of the season has yet to come, our whole goal is to get back to Indianapolis. We put ourselves in a really good position to be there, but we gotta finish the race the right way."
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