Michigan State Women’s Basketball: Monday night’s game at Northwestern canceled

The Michigan State Spartans women’s basketball team will have a longer layoff following Thursday’s win over Nebraska than previously expected. It was announced on Saturday that the game scheduled for Monday, Jan. 3 in Evanston, Illinois against the Northwestern Wildcats has been canceled as a result of an outbreak of COVID-19 among the NU roster.

Northwestern (9-3, 1-0 in the Big Ten) has already had to cancel two games previously as a result of multiple members of the women’s basketball program testing positive for COVID-19 and entering isolation protocols. The first game that was affected by the outbreak came in a cancelation of the non-conference matchup scheduled against Oregon on Dec. 21 in Evanston. The other was the matchup at Minnesota scheduled for Dec. 31.

While Northwestern’s matchup against Minnesota was not immediately clarified what the cancelation would mean under the new updates to the Big Ten’s COVID-19 forfeiture policy announced earlier this week, the game against Michigan State, per release, is not going to count as a forfeit. The league office will work with both programs to try and reschedule the game at a later date, but if it cannot be played it will be counted as a “no contest” for both teams.

Michigan State (8-6, 2-1 Big Ten) is currently scheduled to take on the Purdue Boilermakers in East Lansing on Sunday, Jan. 9 at 2 p.m. EST with the game streaming on B1G+.

Purdue (9-4, 0-2 Big Ten) will play Rutgers on Sunday, Jan. 2, and also recently had a game at Wisconsin canceled due to a COVID-19 issue on the Badgers’ roster.