A-10 commissioner discusses trimming basketball tournaments

Atlantic 10 commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade can’t say for sure how, when or if fall sports will be contested in her conference this year.

But she told reporters Monday she has been in talks with conference schools, including Duquesne, about a variety of plans that also could involve winter sports and a possible contraction of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

If schedules must be trimmed because of a possible delay in re-opening campuses, McGlade said the tournaments could take one of several forms.

“If NCAA championships are, in fact, intact,” she said, “we could name our regular-season champion the (automatic qualifier) and, essentially, not have an A-10 championship. That’s one of our least preferable options.”

Another is modeled after the Ivy League, where only the top four teams qualify for the conference tournament.

“We’re calling it a Final Four A-10 championship,” she said. “Essentially, what would be semifinals and finals, so that we could still keep the student-athlete experience intact.”

There is also the problem of fall sports delayed long enough by the coronavirus to stretch into the first months of 2021.

“If we lost the fall competitive season, how does overlapping fall sports with spring sports look … if we were all of a sudden doubling up all the teams at the same time?” she said.

She noted possible conflicts in scheduling times for athletes to use fields and weight rooms.

“There are a lot of moving parts to that decision,” she said. “From a contingency standpoint, we feel like we have to keep everything on the table for discussion.”

Of course, none of these plans are solid and won’t be for an indefinite length of time.

“The public health regulations will dictate how quickly we can get back to training and participating,” McGlade said.