Team Showed Up To NCAA Tournament Without Their Gear

NCAA Tournament chairs

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.

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.

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.