It was billed as the marquee Pac-12 men’s basketball matchup that would likely shed a tremendous amount of insight as to who the favorite might be to win the conference.
ESPN arrived to Matthew Knight Arena on Wednesday with their A broadcast team of Dave Pasch and Jay Bilas for the nationally televised broadcast between the Ducks and Bruins.
But it didn’t happen.
Team warm-ups weren’t even complete before UCLA packed its gear and headed back to Los Angeles.
A Pac-12 referee tested positive for the Coronavirus hours before the game was scheduled to be played.
The crew of Kevin Brill, Eric Curry and Randy McCall worked the Oregon State-Portland State game a night earlier, ( Tuesday ) and were obviously cleared for that contest.
But, somehow between last night and this morning, one of them contracted the virus, or at least came back with a positive test.
“The officials were tested early this morning” said Oregon head coach Dana Altman after the postponement.
“They were just in the testing area.”
Altman was referring to the loading dock downstairs at MKA where he surmised they were tested and then turned away and not allowed inside the arena.
“We test on the loading dock down in the lower level of the arena” explained Altman.
“My guess is they were tested there. I don’t know that for a fact. My guess would be,…we test the other team,…we test ourselves,…everybody’s tested in the loading dock, so that would be my guess. That’s just a guess,…I do not know. I don’t know if they were tested here,…or where they were tested.”
Both UCLA and Oregon were on the floor warming up when the news made its way to the scoring table and the teams. Then, the Pac-12 announced that the contest would be postponed for two hours so they could scramble for a possible third referee to work the game. Word came down around 1:30 that the game was indeed canceled.
It was learned after the game that the Pac-12 decided not to use the two remaining officials because they had obviously had direct contact with the infected official over the previous 24-48 hours.
“The three officials that worked the Oregon State game last night were just coming over” said Altman.
“The three of them….contact tracing,…we could have played with two if the officials would have been coming in from different places and one had tested positive,… we could have been all right. But it was a crew that had been together and so that wasn’t possible to play with two.”
The Pac-12 will work with both programs to hopefully reschedule the meeting. Oregon is scheduled to travel to Los Angeles Jan. 28 to face the Bruins inside Pauley Pavilion.
Now the Ducks will have the holiday break and will get back at it, hopefully, Dec. 31 when California comes to Matthew Knight Arena 7 pm on the Pac-12 Network.
DANA ALTMAN DISCUSSES UCLA GAME CANCELATION