Washington women’s basketball postpones next week’s games at USC and UCLA due to COVID-19 developments within program
SEATTLE – The Washington women’s basketball team has been put on pause due to recent COVID-19 developments that wiped out Friday’s game against No. 7 Arizona and forced the Huskies to call off next week’s trip to Los Angeles and postpone games at USC and UCLA.
On Wednesday, UW’s athletic department reported three active positive COVID-19 cases out of 568 student-athletes who have gone through testing. The university chooses not to specify how many positive COVID-19 cases belong to each individual program “to protect the health information of our student-athletes,” according to UW associate athletic director for health and wellness Rob Scheidegger.
Before this latest string of postponements, UW’s game against Arizona State that was scheduled for Sunday was scratched as a result of a positive COVID-19 test among the Sun Devils.
“Literally, I wake up every day (saying), ‘Don’t get COVID, don’t get COVID, don’t get COVID,’ ” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne told the Arizona Republic. “In our circle all we do is test, play, eat and go home.”
Three weeks into the Pac-12 season, the Huskies (4-5, 1-5 Pac-12) have had nearly as many conference games postponed (five) as they’ve played.
On Dec. 21, Washington didn’t host Oregon State after the Beavers had positive COVID-19 tests.
The last time the Huskies played was Sunday, which resulted in an 84-63 defeat at Utah.
Washington’s next game is scheduled for Jan. 22 at Oregon State.
The Huskies and Beavers have each had a league-high five Pac-12 games postponed due to COVID-19. Every conference team with the exception of Oregon and Utah has needed to postpone games.
To date, there have been 12 Pac-12 games postponed due to COVID-19. [UCLA will not play Friday (Jan. 8) against Colorado because of injury concerns and failing to meet the league’s requirement of seven healthy scholarship players.]
The Pac-12 plans to work with teams to reschedule its postponed games over the remaining seven weeks of the regular season.
However, adding additional games to the league’s relatively tight schedule will prove to be a logistical challenge.