The latest on the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on sports around the world:
The men’s basketball game scheduled for Wednesday at Boston College at Georgia Tech has been postponed. No makeup date has been announced.
The Atlantic Coast Conference said the postponement was due to continued quarantines and tracing of contacts within the Boston College program.
The postponement delays Scott Spinelli’s debut as the Eagles’ interim coach. The school fired coach Jim Christian on Monday. Sporting director Pat Kraft said Spinelli, the assistant, will be training for the rest of the season. Boston College is 3-13 overall and 1-9 in the ACC.
The Philadelphia Flyers were returning to exercise in limited quantities after a week-long shutdown due to the virus.
The Flyers had 16 players to practice on the ice. General Manager Chuck Fletcher expects eight more to be released for training on Wednesday.
Philadelphia has seven players on the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol list. Coach Alain Vigneault doesn’t expect any of those players to play on Thursday when the Flyers are set to face the New York Rangers.
The Flyers will take on Boston in an outdoor league event on Lake Tahoe on Sunday. Fletcher said he was in constant communication with Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly but had never heard of the Lake Tahoe game against the Bruins that was in danger.
Two other NHL teams, Minnesota and New Jersey, will be returning from their breaks Tuesday night. Buffalo returned Monday night.
The Milwaukee Bucks will have a limited audience for their home games against the Toronto Raptors starting Tuesday night.
The Bucks officials are going to have only the players’ families and invited guests on their next three games. They will have 250 viewers on Tuesday, 500 for Thursday’s game with Toronto and 750 for Friday’s game with Oklahoma City Thunder.
Members of the general public will be allowed to participate in games starting Sunday, when the goats take on the Sacramento Kings.
The Milwaukee Health Department has approved that fans with the Bucks can only fill 10% of the seating capacity of the Fiserv Forum, which equates to about 1,800 spectators. Those in charge at Bucks hope that capacity will rise to 25% in the second half of the season.
Spectators must always wear face covering, except when they are eating or drinking. All tickets are sold in pods with two or four seats to ensure social distance. Fans are not allowed to bring bags.
Louisville will continue the women’s basketball activities with afternoon practice to prepare for Thursday night’s Atlantic Coast Conference game in Pittsburgh.
The Cardinals’ game in third place on Sunday was postponed after a positive COVID-19 test by a Tier 1 employee. Louisville (19-1, 12-1) was subsequently quarantined and traced, and adhered to ACC medical protocols.
The Miami Open plan to allow 750 fans per session for this year’s tennis tournament on the grounds, and they will be allowed to see games in the showcase area.
These games will be played in the 5,000-seat grandstand, which means the crowd there is limited to 15% of capacity due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The tournament will again take place on the Miami Dolphins stadium grounds, where it moved in 2019. The event was canceled last year due to the pandemic. The stadium square for showcase games in 2019 will not be used this year.
The tournament runs from March 23rd to April 4th.
The total participation in this year’s tournament is expected to be 18,000. That’s less than 5% of the 2019 attendance of 388,734 for an event that typically attracts most of the world’s best players.
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