Getty Image / Ezra Shaw
Heading into this year’s NCAA Tournament, travel has been a surprisingly big story.
It started with Charleston not being able to have a flight chartered to get to the tournament because the NCAA changed their policy to only provide chartered flights under 350 miles instead of 400.
Charleston’s trip to Orlando is 380 miles.
Now there has been a bigger travel issue that has come up just a day before the start of the Round of 64.
According to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander, the airline that Grand Canyon flew on didn’t deliver their bags, leaving them without their uniforms and athletic gear for practice ahead of their matchup with Gonzaga.
This year in March Madness travel blunders: Grand Canyon arrived in Denver this afternoon, only to discover the airline it flew on didn't deliver its bags/uniforms/athletic gear, per a GCU spokesperson.
The team practices in two hours and will be wearing regular GCU T-shirts.
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 15, 2023
Luckily, it just so happens that Grand Canyon head coach Bryce Drew is the brother of Baylor’s head coach, who also happens to be in Denver. Following the revelation that GCU’s gear was missing, Scott Drew revealed that Baylor would provide the Jackalopes with practice gear for today.
Hold up! Just in: As luck would have it, Scott Drew is ALSO in Denver—with Bryce. GCU and Baylor both play there Friday (in different pods).
Grand Canyon's gonna practice in Baylor gear tonight 😂
"We're gonna hook 'em up. What are big brothers for!" Scott Drew just told me.
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 15, 2023
GCU gets a tough matchup against Gonzaga as a 14-seed in their 2nd ever March Madness appearance.
Hopefully their bags will show up before tomorrow’s game as they already had plenty to deal with before the travel issues.
I guess airlines are as unreliable for college basketball teams as they are for the everyday passenger these days.