The 24 hours that sports fans will never forget
- Iona
- Mar 20, 2020
- 3 min read

Photo: Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post
By: Troy Mauriello
We are now roughly a week removed from March 11 and 12, 2020. A 24-hour period in which the sports world didn’t just stand still, but was stopped dead in its tracks.
The coronavirus pandemic has wiped sports off the calendar basically across the globe. There will be no NCAA Tournament over the next few weeks, a sentence that still feels strange to type out almost a week later.
The NBA, NHL and MLS seasons have been put on hold. The MLB season will be delayed. International soccer competitions have been canceled or postponed. There will be no golf, no tennis, or no NASCAR for the foreseeable future. Even WWE’s WrestleMania has been forced to alter its plans in the face of uncertainty.
But as we sit on our couches and wait this virus out, the gravity of this situation in our country becomes more and more evident. Spending the next few weeks, and possibly months, without sports is not something that any of us want to do. But it is a necessary step to take in this battle against an invisible enemy.
Still, that doesn’t make the events that transpired last Wednesday and Thursday any less surreal.
I was in Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night, for what would end up being the only real two games of the Big East Tournament. If you were a sports fan who had just woken up from a two-week nap and were dropped into the arena for the St. John’s vs Georgetown game, you would have assumed nothing was amiss in the sports world.
It was the exact type of game that you would expect to see in March, filled with no shortage of madness. Behind a raucous crowd, the Red Storm charged back from a 15-point deficit, closed the game on a 23-0 run, and beat their old-school Big East rivals 85-72 in the opening game of the tournament.
But throughout the game and shortly after, an eerie sense of finality was looming. The NCAA had already announced fans would not be permitted at its tournament the following week. Individual conferences had started to do the same, and it felt as though the Big East was soon to follow.
Then, shortly after 9:30 pm, the biggest domino of them all fell. Jazz center Rudy Gobert had tested positive for coronavirus, and the NBA suspended its season. Lost in the shuffle, the Big East announced it would play the remainder of its tournament with limited fan attendance as well.
Xavier and DePaul faced off in the nightcap on Wednesday, in what would end up being the final full game of the tournament. There couldn’t have been more than 5,000 fans in the crowd as the clock neared 11 pm, but my friends and I remained in the building. Maybe we were just trying to hold on to the magic, refusing to believe that this tournament would look entirely different when it continued tomorrow.
Little did we know, the tournament would barely even make it to tomorrow.
As the clock approached Noon on Thursday, the dominoes continued to fall. Nearly every conference tournament in America had been canceled, and the NCAA Tournament seemed a certainty to follow. Although the Big East tipped off its Thursday opener, between St. John’s and Creighton, it was clear that the game would not make it past halftime.
The Red Storm led 38-35 at the half, in what would end up being the final college basketball game of the 2019-20 season. St. John’s forward David Caraher scored the final basket of the year, and will probably end up being the answer to a trivia question some time down the road.
It was a cruel and surreal ending to an unusual season. A season in which 10 to 15 teams felt like they had a shot to cut down the nets in Atlanta. A season in which non-traditionally dominant programs such as Dayton, San Diego State, and Seton Hall all felt like Final Four contenders.
But unfortunately, 2019-20 will come to an end not with a bang, but with a whimper, as a season we will never, ever forget.
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