Just like it did a year ago, COVID has already disrupted this season of college basketball with countless canceled games and programs being put on pause after outbreaks of the virus.
When the topic came up during his monthly show on the Husker Radio Network on Tuesday night, Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg said he was all-too-familiar with navigating through a season turned on its head by a global pandemic.
After COVID-19 ran through the Huskers midway through the 2020-21 campaign, NU was forced to take nearly a month off before returning to action and having to play 14 games in a span of 32 days.
"The good thing is, we've got a lot of experience with that based on to last season," Hoiberg said, tongue-in-cheek.
The Huskers made it through that unprecedented grind and, somehow, actually ended up playing some of their best basketball toward the end of that season.
But now Nebraska and everyone else is dealing with many of the same hurdles, as the latest COVID variant, omicron, sweeps across the country. As of his radio interview, Hoiberg said he’d counted 66 college teams that were currently shut down due to omicron outbreaks.
The positive news for Nebraska was that the Big Ten Conference finally followed the lead of every other high-major league and adjusted its COVID-19 forfeiture policy on Tuesday.
The Big Ten announced that rather than make teams unable to play due to COVID-19 have to forfeit, those games could be rescheduled for later dates or ruled no contests if necessary.
As long as a team has seven scholarship players available and at least one coach, it will be allowed to play a game under the new policy.
“The conference office and all 14 Big Ten member institutions have been in continuous contact about developments related to COVID-19,” Big Ten Conference Commissioner Kevin Warren said in a statement.
“The well-being of our student-athletes and our entire athletic communities is our top priority and we are updating our forfeiture policy to support their health and safety as well as the integrity of conference competition.”
It’s also worth noting that the CDC announced on Monday that it had altered its recommended COVID-19 protocols by cutting isolation restrictions for Americans infected with coronavirus from 10 to five days. Similarly, it shortened the time that close contacts needed quarantine.
There is no NCAA policy on how long a player must sit out after testing positive for COVID, and the Big Ten has since turned much of that responsibility over to its schools and their local directed health measures.
Kentucky head coach John Calipari recently announced that his entire program had been fully vaccinated with booster shots and would only test symptomatic players/staff going forward.
Last season, the Big Ten rule was that any Tier 1 individual (any coach, player, or personnel in direct contact with the team) would have to sit out for at least 18 days from positive test to being cleared for return.
While there might be more flexibility for coaches, teams, and conferences this time around, Hoiberg was already preparing himself for another jumbled Big Ten season of postponements.
“It’s going to happen. It’s inevitable,” Hoiberg said. “Certain teams already in our league, it’s gone through their team already, so they’re not going to have to deal with it. But a lot of us, it hasn’t gone through us yet. So cross your fingers and stay healthy.
“But listen, with what we’re living through right now, the safety and the health is the most important thing for our players. So if guys have symptoms, we’ve got to get them checked. Hopefully, they don’t, and they can get through it, but this thing is just flying through everything right now.”
