Kelly Graves woke on Thursday morning in Eugene, flipped on the television and settled in to watch Seinfeld.

The University of Oregon women’s basketball coach got lost in an episode centered around Del Boca Vista, the condominium retirement complex where Jerry Seinfeld’s parents reside. George Costanza is obsessed with Marisa Tomei. He secured Tomei’s phone number and worked with Elaine to create a cover story centered around her fictional “boyfriend” — Art Vandelay.

Quality television, but said Graves: “I’d rather be watching last-minute game film of tomorrow’s opponent.”

Ain’t it the truth.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament. It shut down the NBA, postponed Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, and put off the Olympic Games.

And so Thursday hit hard for Graves, who is well aware that the date should have been the eve of the opening game of the Women’s Final Four in New Orleans.

This deserved a better finish.

For Sabrina Ionescu, Satou Sabally, Ruthy Hebard. For you, too. Graves, as well. The Oregon women’s basketball team (31-2) might have had to deal with Baylor and South Carolina in a three-day span near Bourbon Street, but the way the Ducks were playing, who would have bet against them?

Not me.

Because I last left that team in Las Vegas, nets cut down, green and yellow confetti scattered all over Mandalay Bay Event Center floor. Ionescu looked as locked in as a sniper.

Nobody will ever convince me anyone in America could have played Oregon within 10 points. New Orleans and the Final Four was going to be that team’s punctuation mark.

Now, it’s gone.

I reached out to Graves on Thursday because an alert popped up on my phone, indicating that there might have been a scheduled Final Four news conference at Smoothie King Arena in New Orleans. You know, a few final words from the participating coaches and players before the national semifinal games on Friday. But these are not ordinary times.

Graves told me he stayed up Wednesday night well beyond midnight, lost in the Netflix documentary series “Tiger King.”

He ditched his routine, which would have included an early wake-up, CNN on the television, and then catching up on his social media. Instead, the coach slept in until 7 a.m., then joined the cast of Seinfeld at Del Boca Vista.

“How ’bout you?” the coach asked.

I was up early — 5:30 a.m. But only because there was noise in the house. I looked down the darkened hallway and saw light peeking out from the crack beneath the door of our 5-year-old daughter’s bedroom.

I looked in and found her playing with Legos. A few minutes later, at the kitchen table, she pulled out paints and brushes and got to work on what ended up being a painting of a horse standing in a meadow with a rainbow above it all.

“Enjoy that time with the kids,” Graves said, “it’s one of the blessings that comes from this craziness.”

He’s right. We need to look for blessings and dwell on the small victories right now. It’s easy at a time like this to wonder what might have been. The Oregon women’s basketball team was special. Maybe the most talented team to ever suit up in the state, regardless of sport. And there is going to be a line of hollow-feeling landmarks like the Final Four, there to remind us that so much has changed.

Beyond that, though, we have a pile of life perspective.

More than six million people signed up for unemployment benefits in a single week. Businesses are teetering. Too many lives have been lost.

And in the end, a sobering line of sports cancellations takes its appropriate place, at the back of the room. Still, it’s in the room, isn’t it? Because so often sport served to take us away from our troubles.

Sports unifies us.

It lifts us.

In the last few years, as we’ve watched politics attempted to invade the sports landscape over and over. We understand the fundamental reason why — sport is one of the last places people from all sides still congregate and pay attention. We’re otherwise tuned out to each other. Regardless of viewpoint, affiliation or agenda, walk in a stadium or turn on a game and we’re all there together, captive and tuned in.

Ionescu was the best women’s college basketball player on Earth. It would have been something to see her carve up the competition, cut down more nets and finish her senior season with a national title.

And so the canceled women’s Final Four goes down in our state as another “one that got away.”

Sort of like Bill Walton’s broken foot and the red-hot Trail Blazers in 1977-78. Or like that Dennis Erickson-coached Oregon State Fiesta Bowl team that might have won the College Football Playoff, if a playoff had existed then. Or maybe like Michael Dyer’s knee (he was down, yeah?) and that Auburn-Oregon 2011 Bowl Championship Series title game.

Sort of like that.

Only even better.

I don’t blame Graves for staying up late at night, losing himself in a Netflix documentary about big cats and the dysfunctional people who own them.

Not one bit.

And I don’t blame him either for turning to Seinfeld the following morning. People are doing what they need to do these days to cope. Amid that, though, a guy who had every reason to mope, was instead busy looking for blessings.

“Enjoy that time with the kids,” Graves said.

I sure enjoyed watching him coach his.