MADISON, Wis. – Part of Greg Gard’s message when he goes into homes and recruits young athletes to the University of Wisconsin is a promise to their loved ones that he and his staff will take care of them while they are away from home.

It’s a message the head coach takes seriously, which was why he couldn’t in good faith make his team travel to their road game at Penn State over the weekend.

“Being a parent myself, if we walked into a known risky situation, we had something go wrong and we got the virus transmitted somehow if that happened, I couldn’t honestly look at my players and their parents and say I’m confident in the environment we’re walking into,” Gard said. “I couldn’t come to that, and no one around to me could come to that conclusion either. I got no rebuttal from anywhere that we should go forward and play.”

Due to an increase in positive tests in the Nittany Lions program, both schools announced a joint statement Saturday that their Sunday game in State College was going to be postponed due to “health and safety concerns,” leaving the eighth-ranked Badgers (9-2, 3-1 Big Ten) six days between games.

In meeting with reporters Monday, Gard said he was notified over the phone Saturday that Penn State had “an issue” come up Friday and Saturday morning. After discussions with UW medical staff, who conferred with Penn State’s medical team, and the UW administration throughout the day, the recommendation was for the game to be postponed.

“I felt very uncomfortable with the timing,” Gard said. “The fact that there was multiple positive tests through a short time span, the fact that it was all student-athletes, the fact that we knew they had been off on break the previous week around Christmas. Just the information we had I just didn’t feel comfortable.”

“The risk is way higher than the reward. Given what we knew, how the timeline of things and how it laid out, I felt it wasn’t worth it.”

The game marked the first conference game postponed this season because of COVID concerns, narrowly beating out Nebraska’s road game at Purdue scheduled for Tuesday. Unlike the football schedule, the league created two windows to reschedule postponed games. Gard said the league office is working on getting the game rescheduled “sooner rather than later.”

“You’re hoping there are not going to be a lot of these (postponements),” Gard said.

Other than adding an extra day of prep work for Indiana, Wisconsin has operated as normal with the postponement. The Hoosiers are 7-4 and in eighth place in the Big Ten after evening their conference record at 2-2 following a 63-55 home victory over Maryland Monday.

With the pandemic still ongoing, the NCAA announced Monday it has finalized plans to hold the entire NCAA men's basketball tournament in Indiana.

The majority of the 67 games are to be played in Indianapolis at Bankers Life Fieldhouse (frequent site of the Big Ten Tournament), Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse and Indiana Farmers Coliseum. Purdue's Mackey Arena (West Lafayette) and Indiana's Assembly Hall (Bloomington) will also be used. Only one game at a time will be played at Lucas Oil Stadium, according to the release.

The NCAA hopes holding the tournament in one centralized location will make the event safer and run smoother.

"The 2021 version of March Madness will be one to remember, if for no other reason than the uniqueness of the event,” NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said in a statement. “We’re fortunate to have neighbors and partners in Indianapolis and surrounding communities who not only love the game of basketball as much as anyone else in the country but have a storied history when it comes to staging major sporting events.

“This is going to be complicated and difficult; there’s no question about that. We appreciate the collaboration among the men’s basketball committee and staff, our hosts and local organizers, the staffs at each practice and competition venue, and our broadcast and corporate partners. We will all pull together and stage a terrific national championship.”

According to the news release, the Indiana Convention Center will be used as a practice facility and all teams will be living on dedicated hotel floors.

“It looks from the outside like a pretty decent idea,” Gard said. “Keeping everybody close and minimizing teams that do have to fly there. It’s just one flight. Hopefully it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing … Indianapolis has always done a really good job. Whether it’s Big Ten Tournament, the Final Four, it’s been a great city to go to.”

Knowing the COVID pandemic was going to alter the outlook of 2020-21 college basketball season, Gard had countless weekly zoom meetings with his fellow Big Ten coaches to try and hash out several things to get a clear plan moving forward. One unanimous vote: causal was the way to go.

With no fans in the stands and plenty of other things to worry about, Gard said he and his fellow coaches decided that the suit and ties would stay in the closet in favor of workout sweats and sneakers.

“We didn’t have to wrestle over that one,” Gard said. “Everybody was all in favor of that. My clother won’t be in favor of it if it stays this way.”

Gard said there’s been an internal debate of why basketball coaches go runway-ready while coaches in other sports sport a more casual look (i.e. Paul Chryst and his infamous sweatshirt).

“I like to do the research of why we initially started ever wearing suits,” Gard said. “I don’t know really for next year if we will stay (casual). I won’t go as far as Mike Brey has at of Notre Dame and start wearing shorts on the sidelines. I don’t like the mask, but I do like the casual aspect of it.”

Extra Points: Wisconsin freshman forward Ben Carlson has not practiced since mid-December as he continues to work through an undisclosed injury … The Badgers debuted at No.11 in the initial NCAA NET ranking … Wisconsin went 22-7 in the 2020 calendar year, the most wins and best win percentage among Big Ten teams. UW’s 22 wins tied for 3rd most in the nation among major conference teams. Only Kansas (26) and Baylor (24) won more games in the calendar year of 2020.