Practice patience: Cougars remain on hold
Latest test results still needed before starting on-the-field preparation for Tulsa
The University of Houston could learn as early as Tuesday whether it will have enough players available to proceed with Saturday’s game against No. 24 Tulsa.
A weeklong pause in full-team football workouts continued Monday as school officials awaited word on the latest roundof coronavirus test results.
“We’ll see what (Tuesday) brings,” coach Dana Holgorsen said during his weekly video-conference call with reporters. “I just don’t know.”
As of late Monday, the school had not received completed results from PCR diagnostic testing earlier in the day.
But while no formal cutoff date has been set, Holgorsen acknowledged the difficulty in preparing for a game.
“I’ve never not had a Tuesday practice and played a game on Saturday,” Holgorsen said. “I don’t know how you do that.”
UH has not conducted a fullteam practice since Nov. 15, the day after a 56-21 victory over South Florida. A day later, COVID-19 testing protocols revealed at least half a dozen players and one staff member tested positive for the virus, a person with knowledge of the situation said, eventually forcing the postponement of the Nov. 21 game at SMU.
UH players worked out in small groups Saturday and Sunday, Holgorsen said. Monday was a scheduled day off.
“We haven’t practiced in a while,” Holgorsen said.
Saturday’s game is in jeopardy not because of positive tests but the number of players who are in quarantine due to contact tracing, which severely impacts available players for practice on a roster already decimated by injuries.
Any player who tests positive for COVID-19 is required to be sidelined for a minimum 10 days from the onset of symptoms, per guidelines established by the American Athletic Conference Medical Advisory Group. Those players who are identified through contact tracing must enter quarantine for a minimum14 days. There is also a mandatory reacclimation period for any player who tests positive, usually five to seven days.
Testing is conducted Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“I don’t make a lot of these decisions,” Holgorsen said. “I have to wait and see what the advice from the doctors and everything is. They make the decisions on whether we can have full-team activities or whether we can’t.”
Holgorsen said UH began to ex
perience some COVID-19 issues before the USF game, particularly amongthe linebacker unit, but had enough players to move forward with the game. It was only two days later when testing revealed the extent of the outbreak, forcing the Cougars to pause workouts.
“It continued to attack the linebacker room, and that’s just when we couldn’t (play),” Holgorsen said.
Until last week, UH had avoided
any serious COVID-19 issues, with only four positive cases during a three-month window from July 30 to Oct. 22, according to data obtained through an open-records request.
“We had been pretty fortunate up until last week, and then last week caught up to us a little bit,” Holgorsen said.
So far this season, UH has experienced six virus-related interruptions to the schedule, among them the cancellation of season openers against Baylor and North Texas and rescheduled games against SMU (Dec. 5) and Memphis (Dec. 12). Before the start of the season, the Cougars also lost games to Rice and Washington State.
“I’ve got three game plans ready,” Holgorsen said. “I’ve got one ready for Tulsa. I’ve got one
ready for Memphis from earlier this season, and I’ve got one ready for SMU from last week. We’ve got the game plan ready. But if you don’t ever practice, I don’t know how you can line up and play.”
Asked how the team is handling the latest pause in the schedule, Holgorsen noted the Cougars are not alone. More than 30 FBS games have been canceled or postponed the past two weeks as a result of COVID-19 spikes across the country.
“We’re not going through anything that anybody else isn’t going through,” Holgorsen said. “I think they look at what’s going on around the country and say we’re not alone when it comes to this.”