Positive COVID-19 test not a player or coach

The UConn women’s basketball team is dealing with one positive test for COVID-19 and the person who tested positive is not a player or a coach, but another member of the Tier 1 bubble, head coach Geno Auriemma said during a call with the media Tuesday.

That person is currently asymptomatic and in quarantine.

“I have no reason to believe that they were in any way, shape or form being reckless and wanting to just throw caution to the wind. It’s just one of those things that happen,” Auriemma said. “Following all the protocols, they’re in quarantine.”

Tier 1 individuals — generally consisting of players, coaches, trainers, therapists, medical and equipment staff, and practice players — have been tested three times per week since early November, per NCAA recommendations.

Through contact tracing, the coaching staff is currently not in quarantine, according to Auriemma, but the players are. The quarantine began Tuesday.

Third-ranked UConn was slated to play Quinnipiac and either No. 6 Mississippi State or Maine on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, as part of the Hall of Fame Challenge at Mohegan Sun. But those games have been canceled, as has the tournament itself. A matchup with No. 5 Louisville on Dec. 4 in Uncasville

has also been wiped out. The Huskies Big East opener at Seton Hall on Dec. 6 has been postponed, but is likely to be rescheduled.

UConn’s next game, at the moment, is scheduled for Dec. 15 against Butler at Gampel Pavilion.

“Not having those four games and not being able to be with the team as an entire group until Dec. 8, which would be our first practice, obviously that changes everything that we had planned,” Auriemma said. “Like everything else this year, you just roll with it and make adjustments and move on.”

All Tier 1 individuals will be tested twice more this week, in accordance with school and Department of Health guidelines. If those come back negative, UConn players can begin working out within their respective pods on Saturday. Full-team workouts, however, can’t start until the 14-day quarantine is over. The person who tested positive, meanwhile, was to be tested again Tuesday to determine whether the initial result was accurate.

Auriemma had been cau

tiously optimistic about starting the season on time, saying earlier this month that his team was taking all the necessary precautions to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. But as cases continue to rise across the country, a new reality has set in for the Huskies and college basketball as a whole.

“Everybody’s going to be in this scenario at some point — either already has been, is, or will be,” Auriemma said. “You can just pretty much predict that. The one thing that I’ve been struggling with is talking with other coaches around the country, there seems to be such a widespread and such disparity between how each conference, each part of the country, each state, chooses to handle any of these occurrences.”

He added: “There is no magic something that we can say, OK, everybody’s going to do this and ‘boom, we don’t have to deal with it anymore.’ Until we have a vaccine, and everyone’s been vaccinated — those are two separate things — I think we’re going to be struggling.”

The Huskies have seven new players, including six freshmen, and Auriemma said the collective spirit of his young team has remained high despite all they’ve been through since arriving on campus late July.

“They’ve been held hostage since the end of July,” Auriemma said. “They can’t go anywhere, they can’t talk to anybody, they can’t do anything. For a couple hours every day, they’re allowed out to get some recess. It’s incredible what’s happened to them, and yet they hang in there. They don’t talk about, ‘I’m done with this.’ They just talk about, ‘When’s our first game, when are we playing, when’s our next practice?’

“To me, that seems to be the best way to do it. At this point in time, I’m supposed to be there, I’m supposed to be giving them all the good stuff that they need, I’m getting it from them.”

As for what comes next, Auriemma said there’s no blueprint.

“What do you do at this late stage?” he said. “This isn’t June where you just work on individual instruction. You’re trying get ready for games. You’re trying to put a team together. … Everyone is scrambling to try to find what’s the right thing to do.”