Villanova Men’s Basketball Goes On Pause Again

On Sunday afternoon, Villanova men’s basketball announced that they had returned to practice after pausing team activities due to head coach Jay Wright and another staff member testing positive for COVID-19 back on December 27th.

On Monday morning, not even 24 hours later, Villanova announced another pause because of two positive COVID-19 tests from players. As a result of this pause, the Wildcats’ next three basketball games have been postponed. That includes Marquette’s trip to Finneran Pavilion that was scheduled for Friday night. After the Golden Eagles host Connecticut on Tuesday night, their next game is now scheduled to be the following Tuesday, January 12th, which is a home game against Providence.

As things stand right now, the first opportunity in the MU schedule to attempt to make up the game against Villanova is when the Golden Eagles have nearly a week off between visiting Providence on January 27th and hosting Butler on February 2nd. Unfortunately, Villanova is scheduled to visit Seton Hall on the 30th, so that throws a wrench in that plan.

Next up is a space between Creighton on February 6th and Seton Hall on February 14th, but Villanova has three games scheduled in between there. Marquette is off between February 20th and February 27th, but Villanova has St. John’s on the 23rd.

I’m sure if we reversed it and looked at Villanova’s gaps in the schedule, we’d find a bunch of Marquette games in the way, too. There’s not a good time to reschedule this game, at least not one that’s immediately obvious. There’s a possibility that the game will not get rescheduled, as all that matters is getting to 13 games played to reach the minimum to be NCAA tournament eligible. MU’s game on Tuesday against Connecticut will be #12 on the year, while Villanova is sitting on nine games played right now.

We should point out that this is the first game of the season for Marquette that has been lost to a coronavirus concern. Every game that has been scheduled has been played exactly when it was announced up to this point. That’s pretty impressive, given the ongoing issues all across the country as well as the three shutdowns that MU’s women’s basketball team has experienced already this season.

We’ll let you know if there’s any schedule changes to mind, so keep your eyes and ears open.....