Q&A: St. Thomas basketball coach John Tauer on move to D-1 and 2020 season delayed

The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletics Conference (MIAC) announced that competitive sports are shutdown the rest of 2020. That includes basketball. We talked with St. Thomas men’s coach John Tauer about that and the move to D-1 forthcoming next year.

That’s still a tough pill to swallow for University of St. Thomas that’s in the midst of making a transition from Division-III to Division-I next year. However, for John Tauer the men’s basketball coach for the Tommies, it’s the reality he’s trying to relay to his players.

***To watch our interview with John Tauer and KSTP-TV Sports Reporter Darren Wolfson, CLICK THE PLAY ICON***

"We plan on practicing this fall. I think our goal as teachers, educators and coaches is provide the best experience for our student-athletes and we’re still committed as ever. We’re hopeful we can play games after January 1st, but I think at this point what we’ve learned from this as a society is take it one day at a time and being adaptable and trying to stay hopeful and optimistic," said Tauer.

As for training, practices and other activities, teams will be permitted to do some of those as long as it’s in accordance with the NCAA Division III rules and health guidelines.

"I don’t think speculating too much about things out of our control are good. We talk to our players all the time about controling what we can control and that’s within a game, it’s within a season, and it’s within their lives so that’s what we focus on," Tauer added.

The St. Thomas men’s basketball team will be joining the Summit League in 2021.