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News broke on Tuesday afternoon that the Penn State Nittany Lions will not be taking the court for their previously scheduled game against the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Wednesday night. This is due to COVID-19 issues within the Gold Gopher program. This marks the fourth game this season that the Nittany Lions have had impacted by COVID-19.
Our home game Wednesday night vs. Minnesota has been postponed due to positive COVID-19 results within the Gophers program.
— Penn State Men’s Basketball (@PennStateMBB) January 18, 2022
Penn State and Minnesota will work with the Big Ten Conference on potential options to reschedule the game. https://t.co/uJWrcnuben
The two schools will work with the Big Ten in an effort to reschedule this game. If they are unable to rescheduled the game it is unclear what would occur. The conference’s policy on COVID related postponements/cancelations is as follows:
If a team or teams is/are unable to participate in a scheduled Conference competition due to COVID-19, and as a result the competition is unable to occur on the calendar day on which it is scheduled, the competition will not automatically be considered a forfeiture. Upon review and approval by the Conference office, in consultation with the participating institutions and the Big Ten Chief Medical Officer, Dr. James Borchers, the competition may be rescheduled, or declared a no contest or a forfeiture. The Conference office will be responsible for rescheduling any conference competition postponed due to COVID-19.
Following a December 11th matchup against Michigan State, Penn State did not play again until January 2nd due to positive COVID tests within their program as well as Delaware State’s program. Since returning to action the Nittany Lions have been playing some strong basketball for coach Micah Shrewsberry. Penn State is 3-2 in their last 5 games with both of their losses, at Purdue and at Ohio State, coming on the road against ranked foes and being by just a combined 12 points.
The next scheduled game for the 8-7 Nittany Lions is a Saturday afternoon road matchup against Iowa. Hopefully, the Nittany Lions will have Seth Lundy back by Saturday after he missed this past Sunday’s hard fought loss against Ohio State.
Due to how well the Nittany Lions have been playing it is disappointing to see the games impacted by COVID as it has become easy to look forward to watching them play. The fact that Shrewsberry and his staff has the team in that position after they were predicted to be one of if not the worst teams in the Big Ten in the preseason is an incredible testament to both the Nittany Lion coaches and players.