No. 3 Villanova forced to postpone 3 more games
Villanova’s players were dressed and ready for practice Monday morning. The coaching staff also was prepared for just its second workout since all team activities were paused on Dec. 27 after it was revealed that two people within the program, including head coach Jay Wright, tested positive for COVID-19.
All the team needed to move forward with practice before getting on a plane to Chicago to take on DePaul was the results of that morning’s daily tests.
After nine straight days of positive tests, though, the news was not good for the third-ranked Wildcats. Two players tested positive which forced the team to shut down once again and postpone its next three games.
The Wildcats (8-1 overall, 3-0 Big East) were scheduled to visit DePaul on
Tuesday, host Marquette on Friday night and go to Xavier on Jan. 13. No makeup dates have been set. Villanova’s next scheduled game in Jan. 15 at Connecticut, provided the Wildcats are out of quarantine by then.
“These two guys have symptoms,” Wright said of the two unidentified players who tested positive. “…
Because these two have symptoms there’s a chance we could get a couple of other guys that would test positive (Tuesday).”
This is the third time the Wildcats had to shut down due to positive tests. The team paused operations in late September for several weeks and stopped again when Wright and another unidentified staff member tested positive on Dec. 26.
Wright said he “has a couple of ideas” on how he caught the coronavirus, but did not “want to “incriminate somebody.” He did say that he was diligent in following all protocols. He said did not attend social gatherings and wore a mask everywhere he went but still tested positive. He said he had all the symptoms associated with the virus but feels fine now.
“It was like having a bad case of the flu,” Wright said. “That’s what it was for me. That’s what it seemed like to me.”
The players were isolated in individual hotel rooms from Dec. 26 to Jan. 2 after spending Dec. 24-25 meeting with family members for the Christmas holiday in a socially distanced setting in the Finneran Pavilion. Once in isolation the players no contact with anyone and there were no positive tests during that time so Wright feels that the players did nothing wrong.