Big East postpones Villanova vs. UConn basketball game due to COVID-19 contact tracing

Villanova was all ready to hit the road in the Big East for the first time in five weeks when it got the call Wednesday that another of its games had been postponed.

Fortunately, the postponement of Thursday night’s game at Connecticut was not because of a positive COVID-19 test in its own program. The Wildcats learned that a game official working Tuesday night’s home game for the Huskies against Butler had tested positive, leading to a pair of postponed games for UConn.

This latest delay is the 11th game that the third-ranked Wildcats have had postponed or canceled, and further diminished the possibility that they would get in all 20 conference games by the end of the regular season on March 6. They are 5-0 in Big East play.

After Saturday’s game at Seton Hall, the Cats are scheduled to play two games in each of the final five weeks of the season. They have four games that need to be rescheduled, and coach Jay Wright said his team would be agreeable to playing a third game in one week, and possibly two.

“That’s the difficult question that we’re all dealing with right now in the Big East,” Wright said Wednesday on a Zoom call with reporters. “Yes, we would agree to play a third game in a week. We just have to be careful about how we do it, how much travel.

“We have to look forward now and see where we can fit a game in, and it might not necessarily be UConn. Hopefully it is, but you’ve got to get a league game.”

Wright said that upon hearing news of the postponement, he and his staff checked with the Big East office to see if a conference opponent would be available to play Thursday, but none was free. Wright said they then checked local teams, which he did not identify, to see if they could get a game.

“We couldn’t work it out,” he said. “Everyone had either just played or was going to play a game.”

The Big East still must reschedule four games for Villanova: road games at UConn, Xavier, and DePaul and a home contest vs. Marquette. The games against the Huskies and the Musketeers already have been postponed twice.

The UConn program said the team will enter into a daily testing protocol and a modified quarantine. The Big East also postponed Sunday’s scheduled game at St. John’s.

Wright said he felt “really bad for Connecticut” to have to test daily and quarantine.

“I feel bad for anybody that goes through this, having gone through it now,” he said. “It’s tough to tell the kids, but this is nothing compared to when it’s the other way around. At least they got to practice. I really sense in them a disappointment that they’re not playing but a relief that we’re still able to practice having gone through what we did.”

Thursday night’s postponed game was a rescheduling of an original Jan. 15 date for the first of two games between the old Big East rivals. That game was pushed back after ‘Nova had just come off its most recent pause following the positive tests of two players on Jan. 4.