TCU’s women’s basketball hopeful that NCAA could still recognize tournament teams
The TCU women’s basketball program isn’t going to experience March Madness this year.
The NCAA canceled its signature tournaments on Thursday due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s a devastating reality for a TCU team that had six seniors and would have received an at-large bid. The Horned Frogs went 22-7 and earned the No. 2-seed in the Big 12.
But TCU coach Raegan Pebley is among a number of coaches who feel the NCAA should still go through with selecting the field.
No, the games won’t be played but at least programs such as TCU would be rewarded in some fashion knowing it was a tournament team.
“There’s that date that goes up on a banner somewhere for those teams,” Pebley said. “It’s a group of seniors that, whenever they come back to campus, they see that date up on the wall and knew that everything that they worked for was recognized through that NCAA bid.
“I think that would be a nice, controllable finishing touch and an element of closure that the NCAA could provide these student athletes.”
For TCU, it would have been the program’s first NCAA bid since 2010, and its first under Pebley.
Conferences could declare its automatic qualifier as the regular-season champion and then the selection committee could decide the at-large bids.
“It doesn’t need to be seeded and bracketed,” Pebley said. “But I know those committees already had a good sense of who their at-large bids were and finalize who the teams were. That way seniors and teams can have that sense of closure, at least.”
As of now, the NCAA is not planning to go that route. The selection committees have been sent home. But it does seem like a realistic and feasible idea. After all, Pebley described the heart-breaking scene when the team found out March Madness had been canceled.
“It’s devastating,” Pebley said. “I’ve had to have really hard conversations and share awful news with teams before and individual players before, and this is right up there at the top. One of the worst.
“Yesterday I was in survival mode and taking care of everybody and today I woke up mad. And I am sure there’s going to be sadness too that happens at some point. It’s overwhelming at times.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 11:54 AM.
