Gonzaga coach Mark Few was literally 20 seconds into answering a question live on ESPN when he was interrupted by Rece Davis.

Davis informed Few that the NCAA just announced it was canceling all winter and spring championships, including the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Few had been in phone conversations with numerous coaches throughout the morning and they’d reached 100% consensus that they hoped the NCAA would postpone the tournament and make a final decision at a later date when more information was available.

“Extremely, extremely disappointed,” Few said. “I think all of us felt we could postpone and even postpone into May or whatever, and if we needed to cancel we could cancel then. But if that’s what they’re doing, then I guess that’s what they’re doing.”

Second-ranked Gonzaga (31-2) was projected to be a No. 1 seed and open the tournament at the Spokane Arena. The GU women (28-3) were expected to host a four-team pod at the McCarthey Athletic Center.

Gonzaga seniors Killian Tillie, Admon Gilder and Ryan Woolridge, and potentially a few underclassmen that could test the NBA draft waters won’t have a chance to experience March Madness, one of the most popular events on the sports calendar.

“So you telling me I transferred to not play in the tournament,” Woolridge tweeted with a frowning face emoji. Woolridge has cited the opportunity of playing in the NCAA Tournament as one of the reasons he came to Gonzaga as a graduate transfer from North Texas.

Walk-on guard Matthew Lang posted a picture with Tillie and Joel Ayayi from Tuesday night’s celebration of the WCC Tournament title with the words: “Last game with my brothers all together, at least we went out on top.”

“We’ll hit it head on,” said Few, when asked how he would address it with the players. “We’ll explain to them that a lot of things in life are out of their control. We talk a lot about controlling what you can control. This is obviously something that they can’t control. So this is a sad, sad day.”

“Again, we may or may not have gotten to this conclusion at some point, but I think we probably could have at least paused and delayed it before we did this. But again, there’s so many things that are factored in, so I’ll leave that up to the NCAA. I’m just speaking for the coaches and the teams I spoke with.”

The landscape changed swiftly after Gonzaga defeated Saint Mary’s 84-66 on Tuesday night at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. The NCAA announced Wednesday that the men’s and women’s tournaments would go on but attendance would be restricted to essential personnel and limited family.

Later Wednesday, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the NBA to suspend its season. All five major conferences canceled their basketball tournaments Thursday and Major League Baseball pushed back opening day at least two weeks.

“I knew right then and there (after Gobert’s test results) that the dynamic was changing and everything kind of amped up after that,” Few said. “I think the NBA made the proper move. I think we were all hoping NCAA would make the proper move and we’d just postpone, hoping that maybe at a later date we could pick this thing back up. It doesn’t sound like we can, so we’ll have to move on from there.”