Thirty-six hours before San Francisco’s men’s basketball team expected to depart for its season-opening tournament in Nebraska, plans unraveled.
LSU, USF’s season-opening opponent in Lincoln, backed out of the tournament on Nov. 20 to play in the Billiken Classic in St. Louis. By that night, the Dons had decided to back out as well and had signed to play in the Bubbleville event at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.
The job of getting the team across the country on short notice fell to Jonathan Safir, the team’s director of basketball operations (DOBO). Unsurprisingly, Safir didn’t sleep much that weekend, frantically coordinating destination changes with the charter plane company, getting revised expenses approved by his administration and making sure the players filled out the requisite paperwork to be able to participate in the event.