Monday night was supposed to be the return of organized sports in Long Beach, with the Long Beach State men\u2019s basketball team hitting the 405 to play the Bruins at UCLA. A lot of people were excited since no Long Beach team has been able to play an organized game since the COVID-19 shutdown began March 13.<\/p>\n
But like so many things this inside-out year, things didn\u2019t go according to plan. While the Long Beach team was on the bus, fully dressed in uniform to avoid having to use a different venue\u2019s locker room, word came that UCLA had called the game off. UCLA\u2019s statement strongly suggested Long Beach State had been responsible for the positive test.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight\u2019s men\u2019s basketball home opener has been postponed out of an abundance of caution based on COVID-19 protocol within the Long Beach State program,\u201d said the Bruin athletic department statement on the matter, a statement the department declined to elaborate on.<\/p>\n
Long Beach State coaches and officials strongly disagree with that assessment, saying they\u2019d had six consecutive days of negative tests throughout the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were ready to play the game,\u201d LBSU athletic director Andy Fee said. \u201cFor whatever reason, they didn\u2019t feel comfortable within the agreement that we had made with them, but we\u2019ve cleared everything with our medical people and we would\u2019ve loved to have played the game tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fee and head coach Dan Monson said they had clearance from the LBSU medical staff and the city of Long Beach\u2019s Health Department to play the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t fault them or us, this is just how we live,\u201d Monson said. \u201cThere\u2019s so many things that have to be cleared from each health board and each medical staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reiterating the point that there\u2019s no positive case or outbreak on the Beach\u2019s roster, Fee said Long Beach State will continue to practice and prepare for its new season opener, a road trip to Loyola Marymount on Friday, with a home opener in the Walter Pyramid scheduled for Sunday against Seattle U.<\/p>\n
This is not the first game that UCLA has canceled unexpectedly\u2014Cal State Fullerton women\u2019s team was sent home after having already arrived at UCLA. It\u2019s a puzzling situation given the information being given out by both teams. Fee said that fans can expect more strangeness and uncertainty this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery school and every team is going to have to make their own decisions,\u201d Fee added. \u201cI think you\u2019re going to see more of this because the different conferences and teams have different standards and protocols and tests\u2026 Trying to get everyone on the same page is not as easy as it sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s team, meanwhile, had a third nonconference opponent back out of a scheduled game, and they\u2019ll no longer be hosting William Jessup on Monday. They now have only a Dec. 22 trip to USC on their nonconference schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UCLA claims a positive test by Long Beach State led to the game’s cancelation; Long Beach State strongly disagrees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":17185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2071,13],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[199],"class_list":["post-7689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-coronavirus","tag-the562","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7689"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=7689"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}