The Connecticut women’s basketball coach, Geno Auriemma, tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday, the university announced Monday, just hours before the N.C.A.A. selected and placed teams in the women’s national basketball tournament.
“I’m feeling well but disappointed that I will be away from the team for the next several days,” Auriemma said in the university’s statement.
UConn, ranked No. 1 in the country, was expected to travel on Tuesday morning to Texas, where every round of the national tournament is to be held because of coronavirus concerns. The Huskies will leave without Auriemma, who is expected to rejoin them on March 24, the day after his 67th birthday.
The Huskies are likely to play two games in the tournament without Auriemma. They are scheduled to face High Point, a No. 16 seed, on Sunday and then, assuming there is no upset, play a second-round game on March 23.


Auriemma, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, took charge of the program in 1985; the team had completed only one winning season before he arrived.
Since then, UConn has dominated, winning 11 N.C.A.A. Division I titles, more than any other team, and the program has produced several W.N.B.A. stars — including Tina Charles, Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart.
The Huskies also hold the record for the longest winning streak in N.C.A.A. Division I basketball; the streak reached 111 games before ending in a buzzer-beater loss to Mississippi State in the 2017 Final Four.
“We’re getting ready to do something that’s never been done before,” Auriemma said in a news conference after his team claimed the Big East tournament title on March 8. “We’re getting ready to get on a plane, fly to one site and be in the same hotel as 21 other teams. And then we’re going to have to compete and try to win six games. That’s never been done before.”
Deena Casiero, director of sports medicine and the team’s head doctor, said contact tracing protocols found that since Friday no other team member had been in close enough contact with Auriemma to need to quarantine.


“Given the fact that we have been doing daily testing for the past seven days, we feel confident that we were able to catch this very early on in the disease process,” Casiero said in the UConn statement.
A spokeswoman for the team confirmed in an email that all other people associated with the team — athletes, coaches, medical staff members and other officials — were cleared to travel to Texas on time because they have all since tested negative.
Auriemma is not experiencing symptoms and is isolating at home, the university said, and he received his second dose of the coronavirus vaccine on March 10. It can take up to a few weeks for a vaccine to offer immunity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Source: New York Times

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