Each of the past five weeks, since Seton Hall basketball’s players and coaches reunited for summer workouts, everyone has been tested for COVID-19.
Each week, the number of positive tests came back at zero.
Head coach Kevin Willard sees this as proof that his big idea can work. The Willard Plan, as it’s becoming known, is this: Use the window between Thanksgiving and mid-January, when many colleges will empty out, to play games at campus sites.
“Usually my ideas are terrible, but I’m starting to like that one,” he said. “I call it a ‘soft bubble.’ When no one is on campus, it’s really easy to limit the interaction with other people.”
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Willard is not opposed to using an NBA-style bubble, but he doesn’t think the entire college basketball season needs to be played that way. He has some support among his coaching peers — Rutgers’ Steve Pikiell expressed a similar sentiment last week — even as the Big East and other major conferences explore staging the season over multiple mini-bubbles running three or four weeks at a time.
“This summer, I looked at it as kind of a test run for us,” Willard said. “We worked out five days a week. We didn’t tell the kids they couldn’t go to restaurants or stores. I didn’t tell them, ‘Don’t say hello if you see other people on campus.’ My staff went back to their families; I went back to my family.”
Willard's guidance was simple: Be smart and you can help preserve the coming season.
“We’ve talked about staying away from parties," he said. "At the same time, they’re 19, 20, 21 years old in college; they’re going to have interactions with other students. I want them to enjoy college, but let’s not be at a party of 300 kids. I think there’s a middle ground that works.”
With Seton Hall’s fall semester starting this week on a fully open campus, Willard knows the self-policing dynamics are becoming much harder. But his point: During a sparsely populated summer session, his team stayed perfectly healthy.
“So it’s doable,” he said. “You’re going to have a hiccup here and there. But anyone who says this isn’t doable is obviously not trying it — they have no idea.”
Plans under consideration
Among the various plans under consideration for the Big East: a 22-team bubble (men’s and women’s programs) in Omaha, Neb.; a split bubble between the eastern and midwestern programs in Hartford, Conn. and Omaha, respectively; perhaps some combination of the two over the course of a season; and possible participation in regional non-conference bubbles. It seems certain that no bubble will last longer than a month; there is no appetite for holing up college athletes for months at a time, like the pros.
Willard is not opposed to the bubble concept, but he sees it as part of a larger solution rather than the sole solution.
“The way I look at it, if you soft-bubble on campus, you play teams with the same testing standards from Thanksgiving to the end of winter break, in January, and after that you go into a bubble in February,” he said. “Once kids come back to campus, that’s when you go hard bubble.”
One concern about bubbles is mental health. Jersey grassroots hoops guru Rob Kennedy, who organized The Basketball Tournament in a three-week bubble last month, said he couldn’t wait to escape the confines by the end. Kennedy said he can't imagine holing college athletes up for longer periods.
“I think by soft-bubbling on your campus we’re letting our students be normal for the most part,” Willard said. “You want their lives to be as normal as possible for as long as possible. We proved this summer it’s doable.”
One other advantage to the soft bubble: It would make non-conference games easier. The fate of the season’s non-conference schedule is up in the air right now.
“If the Big Ten and the Big East have the same protocols as each other, which I think they will, why can’t we play Rutgers?” Willard said of the Hall’s neighborhood rival. “I’m not going to play school X if they’re not tested and they’re not doing the same things we’re doing.”
Leaving wiggle room
Willard said all of his players reported to South Orange for voluntary workouts in mid-July except incoming freshman Jeff Ngandu, who is expected to arrive from Canada within the next two weeks. So far it's been all individual instruction and strength training, and that will continue well into September. After four months away from the sport, Willard said, the players returned at about 60 percent of their optimal conditioning on average.
“I can’t tell you the mental relief they’ve had from being back together and working out with their teammates,” he said.
Willard, whose two sons (ages 14 and 12) spent the summer playing travel baseball, has no doubt there will be a college basketball season.
“Dan Gavitt is one of the smartest people in sports,” he said, referring to the NCAA’s basketball czar and the son of Big East founder Dave Gavitt. “Dan will figure out a way to get this done.”
Gavitt is supposed to announce the parameters for the upcoming season by mid-September, and Willard is adamantly opposed to pushing the start date into January.
“By pushing it back, you’re closing your window,” he said. “The larger window you have, the more wiggle room you have if something comes up.”
It’s uncertain whether the Willard Plan will gain traction with decision-makers. Perhaps some slightly altered version — like four-team, regional-based, long-weekend pods on vacant December campuses — will take root. One thing is certain: Kevin Willard is committed to preaching it.
“I’m going to keep yelling this,” he said, “until people start realizing it can work.”
Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
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