Your Day in Women’s Basketball, January 6: Mulkey is positive, UConn/Baylor cancelled
By James Hyman
Positive test cancels highly anticipated showdown
Now that 2020 is over, we can finally move on to bigger and better things in 2021 like, oh wait, the Coronavirus pandemic is still in full-swing. Bummer.
Despite testing negative for multiple days before returning to the team, Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey had a positive test which will prevent her from being with the team for the next 10 days. While first priority is certainly the Hall of Famer’s health in battling the virus, the unfortunate consequence of her result is that the Baylor team must limit in-person team activities.
This means that Thursday’s contest against number three UConn has been cancelled. Despite being in different conferences, the Huskies and Lady Bears have kindled a rivalry through their shared greatness over the past decade, with Mulkey being one of the few coaches without an abysmal record against the Auriemma powerhouse.
These two teams do have the potential and star power to meet later in the year in a possible elite eight or final four matchup.
The Baylor vs. Kansas St. game scheduled for January 10th has also been cancelled.
Conference play is heating up over in the Atlantic 10. Both Saint Joseph’s and Saint Louis have paused team activities while VCU and Richmond have not had a game yet in the new year, but the rest of the programs are still trying to find their identities.
Dayton and Davidson remain undefeated in conference games, with the Flyers easily handling Duquesne on Sunday and the Wildcats narrowly avoiding a 4th-quarter collapse against George Mason.
Both teams are very deep with balanced scoring attacks, but neither are ranked very high by the NCAA NET metric that the tournament selection committee will be using in March, meaning they will have to keep winning to have a shot.
The only A-10 team in the top 50 is UMass, however the Minutewomen could not stay undefeated in conference games when they fell to Rhode Island last night. UMass led for the entire game until it mattered most, and could not score on their final two possessions, losing 48-47 at home.