NCAA Will Test Players in Postseason Tournament for Drugs

The NCAA will begin testing basketball players for drugs as soon as possible once the 64 teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament are announced March 8, but it probably won’t be in time for positive tests to affect first-round games.

“Our first goal is to have a clean Final Four,” John L. Toner, director of athletics at the University of Connecticut and chairman of the special NCAA postseason drug-testing committee, said Monday. “Our second goal is to have clean regionals.

“We’re going to try to have a clean regional championships, and in order to do that we must test either before or after the first round.

“We will test continuously through the championship, but we lack the time to guarantee a clean first round because the teams will be selected on March 8 and the first round is played on March 12-13. So we would not have the time to have a fair and clean first round, but we do think we have time to have clean regionals.

“We’re going to subject every single athlete in the tournament to testing, either before a game or right at the conclusion of a game, and that includes the conclusion of the Final Four.

“Our intent is to test early and to continue testing throughout the championship. Each step of the way we want to guarantee that that next step will be clean of drug use.”

Toner said the tests will begin some time between the announcement of the field and the end of the first round. Any player who tests positive will be declared ineligible, although current NCAA regulations do not provide for team sanctions.