Six hours before tip-off on Tuesday, the Big East announced the postponement of Creighton’s game against #23 Providence because of COVID issues in the Friars program. Of CU’s first six scheduled conference games, three have now been impacted by COVID — the game at DePaul originally scheduled for December 20 was moved to February 17, and the Georgetown home game originally scheduled for December 28 was moved to February 14.
“Tough news as we were fired up to be back in front of the best fans in the nation,” coach Greg McDermott said on Twitter. “I’m hopeful the Friars get healthy soon. Stay safe everyone.”
It’s already been nearly a month — 25 days to be exact — since the Jays last played at home. Monday’s practice was the first time they’d been in the CHI Health Center since their 79-59 win against Villanova on December 17. It will now be at least 33 days between home games, assuming next Wednesday’s game against St. John’s happens as scheduled. That would equal the longest gap between home games for Creighton since 1987-88, when Tony Barone’s squad also had a 33-day stretch between home games.
Providence becomes the Big East’s sixth team to enter the league’s COVID protocols after not having at least seven healthy scholarship players and one coach ahead of a scheduled game. Through Tuesday, the Big East had postponed 11 of the 31 games scheduled to be played (35.4%).
“Ed (Cooley) was really disappointed when he called me today,” McDermott said in an interview with John Bishop on 1620AM Tuesday night. “I give him a lot of credit, because he didn’t have to call me. This postponement could all be done through the back channels of the league. But we’re good enough friends that he wanted to call me and explain their situation.”
While the details of the Friars’ situation aren’t public, it isn’t hard to figure out. They had just nine healthy scholarship players on the trip to Omaha — A.J. Reeves was out with a finger injury, and freshmen Legend Geeter and Rafael Castro are redshirting. So (at least) three players likely tested positive after arriving in Omaha, leaving the Friars below the seven scholarship player threshold needed to play.
“The guys were disappointed by the news,” McDermott said in his 1620AM interview. “And it really puts our team in a bind as we move forward, trying to fit all of these games in. I was looking at the schedule after the news, and where the league decides to reschedule this game is going to be really interesting to see. There aren’t that many holes in the schedule to put it. We have to look out for our student athletes; we can’t have guys playing four games in a week.”
McDermott has a point. Unless the Big East changes their COVID postponement rescheduling policies, there aren’t many places to fit this Providence game in. Specifically: the league’s current policy says teams can play three games in a week, but not in consecutive weeks. See for yourself where that leaves the Jays:
Maybe they find a way to squeeze it in, though working around Providence’s schedule is another hurdle — and the Friars might have multiple games postponed before they return to the floor. Maybe another game gets postponed and the Big East opts to re-schedule this Providence game for that date. The likeliest scenario, given the realities of that calendar above, is that the Big East can’t find a new date that works and this game winds up logged as a no-contest.
The only thing that’s certain is the 2021-22 season is likely headed for a finish where every team plays a different number of games, and winning percentage decides the title like it did in 2020-21.
“As we tell our guys all the time, there’s things both in the game of basketball and in life that you can control and things you can’t,” McDermott summed up the situation. “And this is one of those things that we can’t control. We’ve gotta roll with it. The guys are going to go out and get some dinner tonight, and we’ll hit the practice floor (Wednesday) and keep our fingers crossed that the game in Cincinnati on Saturday happens.”