Arizona men’s basketball preparing for ‘logjam’ of Pac-12 games in coming weeks due to COVID postponements

The Arizona Wildcats were supposed to be playing at USC on Sunday, after finishing out 2021 at UCLA last Thursday. Instead they were on the practice court back home, getting ready for a Monday matchup with Washington that had previously been scheduled for two other dates.

And that chaos is going to continue as the Pac-12 works to reschedule numerous COVID-postponed conference games.

“We’re expecting a logjam of games come up here the next couple of weeks,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said.

Monday’s matchup with Washington was originally set for Dec. 2, then moved to Jan. 25 before getting moved up when the Wildcats’ games in Los Angeles were called off. Lloyd said Arizona thought at one point it would be playing a makeup game on New Year’s Day, which led to the team getting into game prep immediately after returning from the holiday break on Dec. 26.

“That ended up not happening,” he said. “We started kind of preparing for that a little bit, and then we knew pretty quickly we got that Washington game locked in on the third. So that kind of gave us a fixed point to work off.”

Arizona’s next scheduled game is Jan. 8, at ASU, then it is set to host Colorado on Jan. 13 and Utah on Jan. 15. Colorado is just coming off a COVID pause, but should be able to make that game.

As for the UCLA/USC postponements? Lloyd said Arizona has some dates “penciled in” for those games but they haven’t been finalized. Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times is reporting the Wildcats and Bruins have a “tentative” date of Jan. 11, in Los Angeles.

The trip to USC will have to get wedged in somewhere else, but Lloyd said he’s preparing for weeks with three or more games.

“I definitely see scenarios where you’re gonna see maybe, like, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, or Monday, Thursday, Saturday-type weeks,” he said.