Montana State Basketball Tournaments Canceled Following Emergence of First Coronavirus Cases

Fri., March 13, 2020

Vince Bagby SWX

The Montana High School Association (MHSA) announced the cancellation of all remaining state basketball tournament games on Friday evening, directly following the announcement of four presumptive positive cases of the virus in Montana. The “presumptively” positive cases were confirmed by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock shortly after 7 p.m. Friday evening. The cases still need to be confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. MHSA announced their decision to cancel the remainder of state tournament action around 9 p.m. at the class C tournament in Missoula, immediately following the conclusion of those semifinal games. The other three state tournaments followed suit at the conclusion of their semifinals. All semifinal game winners are being named co-champions for the 2019-2020 basketball season. The coronavirus cases are reported in Gallatin, Yellowstone, Silver Bow and Lewis and Clark counties. All four reported patients are in their 40s and 50s. All of the Montana high school basketball state tournaments were playing their semifinal rounds on Friday, leading up to the state championship games on Friday night. The affected tournaments are the class AA state tournament in Bozeman, the class A state tournament in Billings, the class B state tournament in Butte as well as the class C state tournament in Missoula

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