On the first Saturday in December, Gonzaga and Baylor, were scheduled to meet each other in the middle of the country for a widely anticipated showdown of the top two teams in the country. But like with so much else in the unraveling early stages of the 2020-2021 college basketball season, plans for that game were wrecked by the coronavirus.

In this debut episode of the Hoops & Howie podcast, our hosts – a couple of college hoops institutions, Dick “Hoops” Weiss and Howie Schwab – explore the many ways the COVID-19 public health crisis is disrupting every team in the country. They discuss the pandemic’s effect on everything from practice routines to game scheduling, analyze which teams are best-suited to handle the uncertainties and interruptions, and ponder the NCAA’s many crossroads and challenges as it tries to navigate this unprecedented season.

Our guest is Lea Miller-Tooley, the driving force between the Battle 4 Atlantis preseason tournament. Miller-Tooley talks to Hoops about the scramble to reinvent her event this season, and create in its place the Crossover Classic – an event so successful that the NCAA sought her insights and advice as it begins planning for the most unusual NCAA Tournament ever.

Thanks to:

* Chris McLernon, Ricky Sanders and Sonic Librarian for the theme music, Joe Blob.* Learfield IMG College for the audio from the championship game of the Crossover Classic between West Virginia and Western Kentucky.