Incoming storm forces changes in travel plans

A winter storm that’s expected to hit the Northeast is wreaking havoc on NCAA tournament travel plans.

ALBANY >> Teams chasing a college basketball title are contending with an unexpected wrinkle that’s making last-minute travel plans difficult — a fierce storm bearing down on the Northeast that’s expected to dump up to two feet of snow in some places and create blizzard-like conditions.

Villanova the top overall seed in the men’s NCAA Tournament, left Philadelphia Monday afternoon for Buffalo, New York, to get ahead of a storm that’s projected to last three days. The defending champion Wildcats, who play on Thursday, had an abbreviated press availability with coach Jay Wright, but no player interviews were granted as the team rushed to its flight.

On the women’s side, top team UConn was expected to find out Monday night which three teams would be expected to travel to Connecticut for tournament games later this week.

U.S. airlines had already begun canceling flights. Tracking service FlightAware.com said that more than 1,100 flights on Monday and more than2,800 on Tuesday had been canceled.

Nobody was facing a more difficult week than Princeton, a

school new to the scramble.

The Tigers beat Yale on Sunday for the title in the first Ivy League Tournament, where in previous years they would have clinched earlier by being unbeaten in the regular season.

The victory allowed for a brief celebration and not much more for Chris Mongilia, director of basketball operations for the Tigers.

“I kind of enjoyed it for a minute, and then my phone started ringing and emails started firing out, trying to figure out when we were going,” Mongilia said Monday. “We found out our flight time this morning. We’ve been booking buses and hotels. It’s been putting a lot of pressure on us to get everything done and organized. But yeah, it’s been crazy.”

Crazier still, the school is factoring in midterms for several players this week, squeezing them in before the team plays Notre Dame on Thursday in Buffalo. The team was scheduled to leave Tuesday.

“A lot of our guys are going to have to take exams proctored by a professor who is going to have to travel with us,” Mongilia said. “They are going to have to take them in a conference room up at the hotel in Buffalo. The storm has definitely put a few bumps in our travel plans.”

Providence was leaving Monday evening for Day- ton, Ohio, for its Wednesday night matchup against Southern California in the First Four, and the Friars had no worries about cancellations because it takes charter f lights for away games and can avoid the local airport, athletic director Bob Driscolls said.

“It’s good we’re getting out tonight because the snowstorm is coming tomorrow. It’ll be a different story,” Driscolls said. “People are excited to be in, so we’re locked and loaded and ready to leave. We’ve been working on it all night and all morning.”

Winter Storm Stella had already begun strafing the Midwest and was projected to begin sweeping through the New York region Monday night. Forecasters said it could dump up to two feet of snow across parts of New York and New Jersey. The National Weather Service issued blizzard watches for New York City and nearby areas, including Connecticut. The storm is expected to last into Wednesday in western New York with as much as 18 inches of snow.

For the NIT, Ole Miss was taking a charter flight on Monday for its Tuesday game at Monmouth in New Jersey. School officials said the stormpushed the travel timeline up a few hours.

West Virginia coach Bob Huggins was delayed getting on the Big 12 coaches weekly media call Monday because he was in a meeting with school officials to discuss the Mountaineers’ travel plans to Buffalo.

“Yeah, we are concerned,” Huggins said.