The Virginia men’s basketball team is out of the ACC tournament after a positive COVID-19 test within the program, ACC announced Friday morning.
The Cavaliers were scheduled to play against Georgia Tech in the semifinals of the ACC tournament on Friday night, after defeating Syracuse in the quarterfinals. Georgia Tech will now automatically advance to the ACC championship game on Saturday against the state of Florida or North Carolina.
“Obviously, we prefer to win the game to advance to the finals,” said Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner, on the ACC Network’s Packer & Durham program. “But hey, it is what it is. We will have to be ready to play. You are still playing for a championship.”
Virginia is the second team in a few days forced to withdraw from the ACC tournament due to problems with COVID-19 and contact tracking, after Duke left Thursday morning.
Although Duke’s athletic director Kevin White announced on Thursday that the Blue Devils’ season is over, this is not necessarily the case in Virginia. To play in the NCAA tournament, a team must submit seven consecutive negative daily tests before reaching Indianapolis and then pass daily tests within the controlled environment there.
Dan Gavitt, senior vice president of men’s basketball at the NCAA, also said that a team only needs five healthy players to play in an NCAA tournament. If Virginia does not have a widespread outbreak of COVID-19 and the rest of the team continues to test negative, Cavaliers must be eligible to play in the NCAA tournament.
The Cavaliers, the ACC regular season champions, are designed with 4 heads in the NCAA tournament in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology.
“We don’t know the details of the Virginia tests, so we don’t know the impact it may or may not have on our situation,” said Pete Moore, a spokesman for Syracuse. “It is safe to assume that we had no positive test prior to Virginia’s game yesterday, as all of our players were qualified to play.”
Pastner said his team has not returned to Atlanta since leaving to play Wake Forest on March 4 to create its own bubble. He told his players that they could only get on elevators with people in their bubble.
“You can do everything right and still get a positive result … that’s what it means,” said Pastner. “Can you be lucky enough not to make it?”