Baylor’s players wrote messages to Virginia in wake of shootings

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Baylor’s basketball team wrote Virginia’s players messages to express their heartfelt condolences on the recent shooting tragedy in Charlottesville, Bears’ coach Scott Drew said Thursday.

The two nationally-ranked programs will clash on the basketball court Friday night in the first round of the Continental Tire Main Event in Las Vegas. Baylor is a 4.5-point favorite (see our Wahoo Preview on this site for a complete breakdown of the two teams).

“I talked to Tony Bennett,” Drew said in a press conference leading up to the event. “I wanted to see how they were doing. My thoughts and prayers are with them. Actually, our players all wrote their team notes. Obviously, their minds are going to be on something different and they’ve got a lot of people praying for them.”

Friday night’s game will be Virginia’s first in a week. The Cavaliers’ game against Northern Iowa, scheduled for this past Monday night, was canceled following the triple murder of three UVA football players late Sunday.

In fact, it was learned that Northern Iowa’s basketball team was locked down at its Charlottesville hotel after the deadly shootings. The team sheltered in place Sunday night and early Monday before UVA lifted the lockdown and Northern Iowa flew home that afternoon.