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Wednesday morning conference calls set tone for ACC basketball’s season of uncertainty

Every Wednesday at 9 a.m., the 15 ACC men’s basketball coaches began the slow trickle of joining their video conference. Sometimes the others would see and hear Wanda Williams, the wife of North Carolina coach Roy Williams, helping him get situated into the call. Or Georgia Tech’s Josh Pastner making sure his daughters weren’t on their iPads zapping the strength of his wi-fi connection.

ACC coaches have returned to the normalcy of trying to beat each other, trying to get every call and trying to motivate their players, especially as the league tournament tips off in Greensboro on Tuesday, one year after being stopped prior to the quarterfinals.

But from April until September in 2020, they were all on the same team, trying to figure out how to navigate the unknowns of the COVID-19 pandemic enough to have a season.

They joined the calls from their living rooms, their offices. Some of them had grown beards. They presented a different image than the properly-manicured, suited up version that the public sees on the sidelines. On this call, they weren’t competitors. They were 15 coaches trying to get things right.

“I was on more phone calls with the coaches than I have in my first 17 years here put together,” Williams said. “And so I think we got to know each other a little bit better.”

It felt like a support group at times, as coaches discussed how their particular campus and state was introducing protocols. Some dealt specifically with how they were allowed to workout players, whether they needed masks on at all times, or how many players could be on the court at once. And no one knew exactly how their states or the nation would proceed, especially when surges occurred.

“We kind of shared the challenges and issues that we were dealing with,” Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton told the N&O. “I don’t think anybody really gave up anything intimate, but I thought it was good to know we all were kind of going through the same things.”

N.C. State head coach Kevin Keatts yells to his team during the second half of N.C. State’s 65-62 victory over Pittsburgh at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C., Sunday, February 28, 2021.
N.C. State head coach Kevin Keatts yells to his team during the second half of N.C. State’s 65-62 victory over Pittsburgh at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C., Sunday, February 28, 2021.

‘I don’t know if that would have happened in the past’

It led to moments during the actual season like N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts reaching out to Clemson coach Brad Brownell when his program had to pause basketball activities due to a positive COVID test.

Brownell and the Tigers were one of the first programs in the league to experience a pause, and Keatts consulted with him about how Clemson handled its players. They compared notes on what the school’s administration did to help.

“I don’t know if that would have happened in the past,” Brownell told the N&O. “There’s calls like that that you’re making to each other. I think that’s come about through this because I think we were all really trying to help each other have a season and do right by each other to make it right for our kids. We all kind of feel a responsibility to do that.”

ACC senior associate commissioner Paul Brazeau, who oversees men’s basketball, initially started the calls to make up for missing their annual meeting.

The 9 a.m. calls took place during a time that offered a rare opportunity for the coaches to assemble with essentially nothing else going on. They weren’t preoccupied with competing for a recruit because the NCAA extended its dead period to put a halt to in-person recruiting. They didn’t have to worry about preparing for their incoming freshmen to arrive because most of their universities weren’t at a point where they were allowing students on campus.

The conversations started out with COVID-related issues taking up the majority of time. Brazeau would bring on medical experts to join in and answer questions. Brazeau said the coaches requested that they continue the calls on a weekly basis because they were having constructive conversations and there were more topics that needed to be addressed.

“A lot of times, because we’re so competitive, everything that we’re do is very secretive, and nobody wants to share anything,” Keatts said. “And I think in this case, we all knew that we had to get on the same page in order to do the best thing for our student-athletes.”

All issues were up for discussion

Some conversations were strictly about basketball, like when they entertained beginning the season in January and only playing an ACC schedule. They had people like NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt and Duke athletic director Kevin White, whose tenure on the NCAA basketball committee ended last season, on the call and they discussed issues like the new transfer rules and moving back the start of the season. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski also initiated the idea of allowing every Division I team in the NCAA Tournament for this season only, which did not pick up any traction nationally.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski directs his players late in the second half against North Carolina on Saturday, March 6, 2021 at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski directs his players late in the second half against North Carolina on Saturday, March 6, 2021 at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill, N.C.

As the summer of social justice began to unfold with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the election heated up, the coaches discussed that too.

“There were a lot of things going on in the world that had some impact on college basketball — some tangentially, some directly,” Brazeau told the News & Observer. “It was a great opportunity where there could be some genuine camaraderie in terms of the coaching business. Where you could collectively talk about issues that are out there and not necessarily just from the seat of a Carolina issue or a Virginia Tech issue. You were able to maybe have a little more global perspective on some of the things we were looking at that affected the student-athletes.”

Virginia Tech’s Mike Young, who was named the conference’s Coach of the Year on Monday, still has his notes from the meetings readily accessible. Young called their conversations “therapeutic” while trying to figure out the best ways to deal with the pandemic.

“I don’t know of any one thing or two things that that I took from it, I do know this, I was engaged,” Young told the N&O. “We’re all fighting like hell to win games, but at the end of the day, we tried to do what’s best for basketball, what’s best for the league and I always felt that way coming away from from those calls.”

As the COVID vaccines is being disseminated and states began to open back up, there’s a much better chance the coming offseason will see a lot of events on the basketball calendar return to normal including recruiting. While Brazeau doesn’t anticipate weekly calls again, he did say the success of their video conferences could lend to using them more to supplement their in-person meeting.

“I look back on it now and I’ve heard what some of the coaches have said,” Brazeau said. “We all look back at and say it was worth that hour and a half every week because we stayed on top of the issues.”