Chad Finn
Sports
THE BOSTON GLOBE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020 | BOSTONGLOBE.COM/SPORTSC
TV HIGHLIGHTS
Exhibition baseball:RedSox-Rays,6:35p.m.,NESN
College basketball:BC-NotreDame,7p.m.,ESPN2
College basketball:BU-Colgate,7:30p.m.,CBSSN
NBA:Nuggets-Mavericks,8p.m.,ESPN
Listings,C7
More coming for Patriots
INSIDE NFL awards team four compensatory draft picks.Log, C4Stopped short
Northeastern denied NCAA tourney bid by Hofstra.C6Garden of delights
Divisions 1 and 4 state finalists determined.Schools, C6-7Sports events without fans part of game now
March and April are the sports fan’s an-
nual reward for enduring the doldrums of
February. Just look at all the good stuff we
have immediately ahead, in Boston and
elsewhere.
NFL free agency begins March 18,
meaning we’ll finally get real answers to
that popular February parlor game, “Say,Want To Guess What Tom Brady Will Do,
Since No One Has An Actual Clue?” That
game got older faster than hopeful stories
from Florida about whether Nate Eovaldi
can be the Red Sox’ No. 2 starter. (I wrote
one; he can’t.)
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament
— at last, March Madness! — begins with
the First Four March 17-18. The Red Sox
begin their quest for 82 wins in Toronto
March 26, with the home opener againstthe White Sox — the superior Sox this year
— on April 2.
The women’s Final Four commences
April 3 in New Orleans. The men’s version
starts the next day in Atlanta. At many
points during the men’s games that week-
end, Jim Nantz will tell us, with that prop-
erly subdued reverence in his voice, that the
Masters begins April 9 on CBS.
The Frozen Four, the most underrated
great event in sports for my buck, drops thepuck April 9 in Detroit. Patriots Day — the
best single sports day on the calendar in
any city — is April 20, with the Boston Mar-
athon and the 11:05 a.m. first pitch of a
Red Sox-Indians tilt. Then comes the NFL
Draft in Las Vegas, beginning April 23.
And we didn’t even mention the Bruins
and Celtics making their closing sprints to-
ward the postseason.
That’s what is known as a cornucopia of
FINN, Page C3Dan Shaughnessy
Covering MLB’s
newest shift
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Nomar Garciaparra
was ahead of his time. Come to think of it,
maybe David Price can come back to the
Red Sox now.
Tuesday morning was Day 1 of having
no reporters in the clubhouse at spring
training. It was the same at every NBA,
NHL, and MLS locker room in North
America. The coronavirus has temporarily
(perhaps) created an atmosphere that players crave. Can’t
say that I blame them. Who would want all those prying
eyes when you are at your workplace?
Let the record show that I was one of the last reporters
to darken the doorstep of the Red Sox clubhouse at JetBlue
Park before the ban was announced Monday night.
It was an uneventful experience, but I’ll tell you about it
anyway since I may be the last Globie ever to work the Red
Sox room at JetBlue.
It was early in the afternoon Monday. Most of the Red
Sox regulars had done their early-morning workouts and
gone home. A few were hanging around, waiting for a bus
ride to North Port to play the Braves Monday night.
Alex Verdugo, the Dodgers prospect who will go down in
history as the man hired to replace Mookie Betts, was hasti-
SHAUGHNESSY, Page C3
IvyLeaguecancels
basketballtourneys
By Bob Hohler
GLOBE STAFF
They billed it as Ivy Madness. But something crazier
and imminently dangerous — the escalating threat of the
coronavirus — spurred the Ivy League on Tuesday to cancel
its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments this week-
end at Harvard University.
The decision came just hours before Governor Charlie
Baker declared a state of emergency as the virus spreads in
Massachusetts. Baker's executive order could affect large
public gatherings, including athletic events, in the near fu-
ture as the disease exacts a toll on the local economy and
life in every sector of society.
In the sports world, the Ivy League announcement was
seen as a harbinger of cancellations to come. While the
Boston Athletic Association weighed whether to call off its
historic Marathon for the first time since World War I and
TD Garden awaited guidance from the government and
Centers for Disease Control, a number of other athletic
contests already were canceled, and others were in jeopar-
dy.
“I can’t say I’m shocked’’ by the state of emergency, Rob-
in Harris, the Ivy League’s executive director, said in an in-
terview. “This whole situation is unprecedented.’’
Presidents of the Ivy League schools unanimously de-
cided to cancel the basketball tournaments based on rec-
ommendations from public health authorities and medical
CORONAVIRUS, Page C3Celticsmake
itamess,but
holdoffIndy
By Adam Himmelsbach
GLOBE STAFF
Celtics 114
Pacers 111INDIANAPOLIS — In an in-
stant, the Celtics’ once-comfort-
able lead had been sliced and
diced until it did not exist anymore. It was a 19-
point cushion in the third quarter, and still a
seemingly stable 16-point edge with less than
eight minutes left in the game, and then it was
gone, with Victor Oladipo turning back time
and looking like an All-Star again.
For Boston, the most surprising part of this
meltdown was probably that it wasn’t necessar-
ily surprising at all. This team that generally
handled success well this year has consistently
wilted recently.
The Rockets wiped away a 17-point lead.
The Nets stormed back from a 21-point deficit,
including an unfathomable explosion from a
13-point hole with four minutes left in regula-
tion. The Thunder wiped away an 18-point dis-
advantage and made the Celtics stumble
through the end.
Now, it was happening again, and it felt like
the season was somehow on the brink. But dur-
ing a timeout after Oladipo had hit yet another
3-pointer, there was urgency on Boston’s bench.
“That's the thing we said when we called
timeout: ‘We need this,’ ” coach Brad Stevens
said. “As uncomfortable as it is right now in the
moment, we need it.’”
And while there was still some wobbling left
to do, with Indiana scoring 6 more points to
CELTICS, Page C5ANDY LYONS/GETTY IMAGES
Gordon Hayward helped the Celtics get a
handle on their skid Tuesday, scoring 27
points in a needed victory at Indiana.Rarefied air
Bruins shut out Flyers, hit 100 points for third straight season
By Kevin Paul Dupont
GLOBE STAFF
Bruins 2
Flyers 0PHILADELPHIA — Two of their
top four defensemen were home on
the couch, nursing injuries. Their
forwards chopped up the puck for the first 40
minutes like they were auditioning for chefs’
positions at a Japanese steak house.
All that, and the Bruins somehow had to
find their way around the Flyers, the NHL’s
hottest team the last three weeks with a perfect
9-0-0 record.
When the night was over, the Bruins boo-
gied down Broad Street with a 2-0 win Tuesday,
backed by some sensational netminding by
Tuukka Rask (36 saves, 50th career shutout)
and timely goals from Matt Grzelcyk and Pa-
trice Bergeron.
The win, their 44th this season, kept the
Bruins tucked neatly in first place in the NHL’s
overall standings and also made them the first
team this season to reach 100 points. They
have hit triple digits the three full seasons
Bruce Cassidy has been their bench boss.“Well, these days, it’s one of those things,
you almost have to get 100 points to make the
playoffs,” said Rask, the Bruins still not official-
ly qualified for the postseason. “The league’s
tighter than ever. We try to get a head start ear-
ly in the season and keep the momentum going
all year — I think we’ve pretty much accom-
plished that this year.”
With back liners Brandon Carlo and Torey
Krug sidelined because of upper-body injuries,
John Moore and Connor Clifton (out since
BRUINS, Page C4KEVIN PAUL DUPONT/GLOBE STAFF
The Bruins’ Chris Wagner and Brad Marchand conducted interviews in
a hallway Tuesday, separated from the media by a plastic folding table.DREW HALLOWELL/GETTY IMAGESBruins goalie Tuukka Rask had an answer for Nicolas Aube-Kubel’s shot at point-blank range, one of his 36 saves in the shutout victory.