Mark Emmert: Rudy Gobert's Coronavirus Diagnosis 'Exclamation Point' for NCAA

NCAA president Mark Emmert told ESPN's Mark Schlabach on Sunday that Rudy Gobert's positive test for COVID-19 on Wednesday served as an "exclamation point" for the NCAA, which was originally planning to go forward with the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments without fans in attendance.

The NCAA ultimately chose to cancel both events entirely.  

NCAA vice president for men's basketball Dan Gavitt further elaborated on how Gobert's diagnosis changed the organizing body's stance on holding the tournament:

"When Rudy Gobert was infected on Wednesday night, I think the realization in the basketball community hit home and was very much felt on Thursday morning. The student-athletes, from what we were hearing and sensing, felt very vulnerable. Here was someone they would all like to be one day, playing in the NBA, who got infected and was quarantined with his teammates. His opponents were quarantined.

"That was really, in my opinion, a seminal moment in everybody's mindset about how impractical and possibly not responsible it would be at that point to go forward with trying to hold these national championships."

Emmert added the NCAA felt "confident" and "really, really good" about the initial plan of continuing the tournament without spectators before news of Gobert's diagnosis broke. 

"We [were] completely convinced at 4 p.m. on Wednesday that we could conduct the championships without fans by controlling the sites effectively," he said. "We thought we could control the perimeters and control the environment, and, as best as possible, travel because it's mostly charter travel and buses one way or another."

Emmert also said that a major concern was the limited number of test kits available and that "testing protocols that were available were a little bit worse than we'd anticipated." That left the NCAA concerned about the ethical dilemma of using those limited resources on healthy college athletes when perhaps they would be better served on higher-risk individuals during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Several professional leagues took quick action following the NBA's decision to put its season on hiatus for 30 days, with the NHL also suspending its season and the PGA Tour canceling several events through April. In Europe, the major soccer leagues, including La Liga and the English Premier League, have also gone on hiatus. 

A March without its college basketball Madness is extraordinarily rare, however. It is the first time since the men's tournament began in 1939 that a champion won't be crowned, and it's the first time since the NCAA took over the women's tournament in 1981-82 that a women's title won't be decided, according to Dan Wolken of USA Today.

Even projecting what might have been is difficult with the NCAA deciding not to release a bracket to fans for either tournament.