Inside The Huskies

UCLA Game Scrapped by Huskies' COVID Issues

The teams were supposed to play on Sunday at noon in Alaska Airlines Arena.
Dan Raley|
UCLA Game Scrapped by Huskies' COVID Issues
UCLA Game Scrapped by Huskies' COVID Issues

The University of Washington canceled rather than postponed Sunday's men's basketball game against fifth-ranked UCLA amid COVID-19 issues, dropping the matchup for good because the schools weren't able to reschedule it.

As a result, the Huskies will be required by league policy to forfeit.

This marks the second game in four days that Mike Hopkins' team has failed to play because players and coaches are in virus protocols. The Huskies backed out of last Thursday's Pac-12 opener at Arizona for the same reason, a game that now will be played on Jan. 25  

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported that as many as seven members of the UW program were affected.

The Huskies (4-) and the Bruins (6-1) were scheduled to play a home-and-home series, but with the Alaska Airlines Arena encounter gone for good, they'll be relegated to a lone meeting on Saturday, Feb. 19, at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles. 

With these two league games scrapped, the UW won't play again until meeting Gonzaga (6-1) on Sunday, Dec. 12, in Spokane. 

It is believed the UW, which has all of its players and coaches vaccinated, encountered the virus while playing in the Crossover Classic in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, prior to Thanksgiving. Three of the four teams involved in the tournament have reported positive tests, including Nevada, which has lost coach Steve Alford for three games. 

Had the UCLA-UW matchup been played, it would have overlapped in town with Sunday's NFL game between the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals, which kicks off at 1:25 p.m. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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