AUBURN | When Butch Thompson met with his team for the last time Saturday, he looked around the room and his eyes fell on one of his seniors, Conor Davis.

Davis couldn’t look back. Thompson knew the meeting couldn’t go on much longer.

“I could tell that he was having a moment, and he's just one of the seniors I made eye contact with standing before the entire team,” Thompson said. “I'm like, 'we're not doing it today,' so I delayed that. I don't know if that was a mistake or not.”

What Thompson wasn’t willing or ready to do last Saturday was say goodbye to Auburn’s 2020 baseball team. At the time, he knew the College World Series had been canceled and all team activities were suspended through April 15 due to the coronavirus global pandemic.

The news came swiftly and got progressively worse after Auburn’s final game Wednesday night. It started with a decision to play the opening SEC series that weekend without fans. Before too long, the NBA and most professional sports were suspended and the NCAA basketball tournament canceled.

“At that moment in that time, I think I was more stunned,” said Thompson of Saturday afternoon’s meeting. “Just all these games ahead--once you start a season, where you're 18 games into it, you just get in a routine of competing and battling and trying to make adjustments, and all your emotions that go through a ball season.

“It was ripped out so quick and so abruptly, I still think we were all in a state of shock, and at that point I said, hey, we'll wait and allow the emotions of this thing ending, we'll do that another day.”

That day is coming soon. On Tuesday, the SEC canceled all competitions for the remainder of the 2019-20 athletic year, ending any hopes of resuming baseball this spring. The Tigers finished a truncated season 13-5.

The NCAA has granted an additional season/semester of eligibility for seniors participating in spring sports, but Thompson said much of the details still need to be sorted out before any of AU's five seniors including Davis, Rankin Woley, Matt Scheffler and Ryan Watson can make an educated decision.

“I don't think college baseball, I don't think anybody is ready to have that. We need more direction, we need more answers,” Thompson said. “One, I'm going to do everything in my power to help Auburn baseball. This was probably the best roster, on paper, in our five years. But we'll continue to try to do that and try to put the best roster we can together.

“And then I just don't like these guys; I love these guys. But what's going to be best for them? Once we see where we're headed and what we're allowed to do and what that relief looks like, then these guys have got to make some business decisions. But we've got to have more information. The players need more information.”