The University of Richmond’s athletic department has creatively responded to the cancellation of NCAA athletics because of the COVID-19 by creating a new series of UR men's basketball game reruns.
The series will feature Bob Black, director of broadcast and news content. The game reruns will be available via Youtube and RichmondSpiders.com.
The UR basketball series will show all 13 of the 2019-20 home basketball games while excluding commercial breaks and timeouts. Per conference rules, only the games produced by SpiderTV can be released digitally, according to the Spider Athletics article about the series.
The first game was released during the week of March 23rd, featuring the home-opener overtime win over St. Francis University on Nov. 8. The win against St. Francis marked Richmond’s only 100-point scoring game, the first since the 2016-17 season when the Spiders defeated Duquesne University 101-90 at home.
Each week Spider Athletics will rerun two seperate games, with the exception of the week of May 4.
Redshirt junior Grant Golden, arguably playing his best season yet, thought the game reruns were important for the fan base.
“I think what we did this year and what we accomplished should be celebrated, and it will give a preview of what we are going to try to do next season [to] keep this momentum rolling,” Golden said.
Golden is the only player in Spider history to earn All-Conference honors after freshman, sophomore and junior seasons.
Redshirt junior Nick Sherod thought the reruns would be a fun way for Spider fans to remember such an exciting season "and hopefully remove at least some of the sour taste that was left in all of our mouths due to the cancellation of the postseason tournaments," he said.
Bob Black will be voicing all play by plays with analysis assistance from a Richmond Hall of Famer, Greg Beckwith. Beckwith played on the 1983-84 basketball team and helped the Spiders to their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
Beckwith was also the recipient of the Kevin Eastman Award.
Assisting Beckwith will be Blake Ellett, who will be producing and editing.
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Below is the schedule of the home game reruns:
March 23-27: St. Francis University and Davidson University
March 30-April 3: Vanderbilt University and George Mason University
April 6-10: University of South Alabama and La Salle University
April 13-17: University of Massachusetts and George Washington University
April 20-24: St. Joseph's University and McNeese State University
April 27-May 1: Dayton University and California State University, Northridge
May 4-8: Saint Louis University
Contact sports editor Grace Mittl at grace.mittl@richmond.edu.
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