Bankers Life Fieldhouse is just 15 minutes away from CJ Walker’s home in Indianapolis.
The Ohio State redshirt junior guard said he had 20-plus tickets for family and friends to come see him play in the building in which he won a state championship with Arsenal Technical High School in 2014.
By Wednesday evening that number dwindled, and before noon Thursday, none would even have the chance to watch him on TV, as the Big Ten Tournament was canceled due to the spread of the coronavirus.
Walker said the hardest phone call he had to make was to his late grandmother’s best friend.
“She wasn’t able to come to a lot of games, being older and things like that, so having to let her know she couldn’t come to the game and then it was canceled, it kinda hurt because that’s a piece of my family so that was probably the worst one,” Walker said.
A little more than 24 hours earlier, Walker spoke before the media in Columbus, Ohio, with the Big Ten Tournament scheduled to proceed as normal despite the cancelations or attendance restrictions of several other conference tournaments across the country.
But things quickly changed, as a rapid-fire series of escalating events made it clear just how fluid the situation had become.
“We woke up this morning prepared to play a game without the fans, so we were ready to play, and obviously you here this type of news it can be very frustrating –– to be ready for a game and then all of the sudden it’s all canceled and you’re packing up and going home,” Walker said.
Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine announced that first-round NCAA Tournament games held in Dayton, Ohio, and Cleveland would be played with no spectators, and soon after, NCAA president Mark Emmert released a statement that said the entire tournament would follow the same protocol.
The Big Ten followed suit, though it allowed two Wednesday openers to take place in Indianapolis before barring fans beginning Thursday. It was the second of the two games that drew the ire of the panicked public.
Just hours after the NBA announced it would suspend its season following the news that Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus, Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg left the team’s Big Ten Tournament game with minutes left on the clock with an apparent illness.
“I don’t know if that particular situation concerned me too much,” Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann said. “I just felt like, obviously if it had been an issue where it was clear that he had the virus.”
But Holtmann was concerned enough that he felt uncomfortable sending his team out on the floor when the tournament had yet to be called off early Thursday. The team even had a walkthrough leading up to its 6:30 p.m. tipoff against Purdue.
“All that had happened yesterday I think maybe made it all seem really quick to come back around and play the next day,” Holtmann said.
But a call came from Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, and Holtmann found out the tournament was called off just minutes before a public statement was dispatched.
Duke and Kansas have now suspended athletics indefinitely, withdrawing them from the NCAA Tournament –– which has not yet been called off.
“You want to have a ring, you want to end the season the right way, which I feel like we could’ve did with this team,” Walker said. “We had a good February going into March, I feel like we were playing really well, and that’s what we were preparing for. You want to be champions around this time of year.”
Walker said the decision to cancel the tournament was smart, but with no chance at a Big Ten title left and the NCAA Tournament hanging in the balance, it’s possible that neither Walker’s family nor the rest of the public will have the chance to watch the Buckeyes play in any capacity again this season.
