It is hard to know who’s going to play due to the latest COVID variant.

Three bowl games with ACC teams were canceled, and three basketball games scheduled for Wednesday have been postponed. Virginia Tech’s proximity to omicron infections scrubbed its trip to Chapel Hill, Duke cannot go to Clemson and FSU won’t be traveling to BC for the same reason.

It is likely that after the Tar Heels will not be hosting Virginia Tech, they also won’t be going to Boston College on Saturday, New Year’s Day. There may not be enough distance between positive tests and the next game.

Frankly, it still worries me about the Duke’s Mayo Bowl Thursday since both the UNC and South Carolina teams reconvened in Charlotte after they went home for the Christmas holidays. What are the chances that one or two of the 85 players on each squad did not heed their coach’s warning?

“We’ve had one guy in two years who missed a game because of COVID,” Mack Brown said before Christmas. “Our guys have handled it so well. So, we told them, when at home, be smart around your friends, wear your mask, take care of yourself. You don’t want to bring it back to the team because it spreads so fast. You could obviously have a game canceled.”

Head coach Mack Brown and the rest of UNC Football are hoping they don’t see their upcoming matchup against South Carolina in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl get canceled because of COVID-19 cases and exposures. (Photo via the Associated Press.)

Assuming every player was tested in private upon arriving in Charlotte, and we haven’t heard anything by now, there was no mass outbreak on either team. Since Carolina has been good about announcing injuries before games, we should learn if any players tested positive and were sent home.

Brown said, in preparation, his team has done some “cross training” so players might be ready to step in at other than their regular positions. And, according to the head coach, every assistant as well as the head man has a back-up who will take over the duties of any unavailable coach.

The UNC medical staff has done a commendable job in keeping the athletes healthy, so they could play a second season without an outbreak that has so shortened other rosters that their games could not be played.

College basketball protocols say that if a team has seven healthy players and one coach, it has to go on with the game whether that might be the first seven or the last seven. Imagine a coach forced to play an important conference game without two or three of his top guys – or himself!

 

Photo via Joshua S. Kelly/USA TODAY Sports.

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