UVM men’s basketball openers delayed

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) -Fans of the UVM men’s basketball team will have to wait a few extra days to see to Hoopcats make their season debut.

The America East Conference announcing Tuesday afternoon that Vermont’s season-opening series with UMass-Lowell has been pushed back two days. Instead of being played December 19th and 20th at Lowell, the games will now be played on Monday, December 21st and Tuesday December 22nd.

On Monday, Lowell announced that it was postponing a third straight non-conference game due to two members of the River Hawks’ Tier 1 travel party testing positive for COVID-19. Those positive tests came in the wake of Lowell completing a stretch of four games over nine days at ‘Bubbleville’ at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.

The UVM men’s basketball team was set to play three non-conference games in ‘Bubbleville’ November 30th and December 1st and 2nd before those games were canceled when the University announced it would be delaying the start of the season for it’s winter sports teams until December 18th.

When Channel Three Sports spoke with UVM men’s basketball head coach John Becker last week, he said that while his team was looking forward to playing those games, his players did express concern about being at Mohegan Sun with upwards of forty other teams at the same time as part of that ‘Bubbleville’ concept.

Now, the Lowell men’s team is on a pause, but the hope is that by pushing their games with Vermont back a couple of days it will give the River Hawks time to complete their COVID protocols and be ready to play the Catamounts in just under two weeks.

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