Marquette men’s basketball was slated to travel to Villanova, Pennsylvania, to take on the No. 5 Wildcats at Finneran Pavilion Jan. 8.
However, Villanova announced Monday morning that the next three Wildcats’ matchups — Tuesday at DePaul, Friday at home against Marquette and Jan. 13 at Xavier — will be postponed due to COVID-19 issues in the program. As of now, the BIG EAST has yet to schedule a makeup date for these games.
“We are obviously going through a tough time right now in our program,” Villanova head coach Jay Wright said in a statement. “Today we were getting ready to practice and head to DePaul this afternoon, and we learned we had two positive tests from players. That immediately shuts us down and puts us into a 10-day quarantine at least. That’s what we know exactly at this time. We’re in that mode of trying to figure that out. … A couple of staff members tested positive on the 26th and 27th but they weren’t with the players. The virus can show itself within 14 days so (that’s) something we are looking at.”
This comes the day after the team returned to practice. Villanova men’s basketball paused activity Dec. 27 through Jan. 3 when Wright contracted the virus.
“We had quarantined for 10 days with nine consecutive days of negative tests for all players. On the 11th day of our quarantine we practiced together, for the first time (Sunday),” Wright said. “I feel great. I am ready to come out of quarantine tomorrow. I tested positive on Dec. 26. It had nothing to do with the players — it was me. Because I tested positive on the 26th, we (went) back to the 23rd, which was the last time we were all together at Marquette. … The players went into quarantine while I was in isolation. We had them in a hotel in individual rooms from the 26th to Jan. 2. They were isolated. No players did anything wrong.”
This story was written by Zoe Comerford. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @zoe_comerford.
