Texas MBB Matchup With Kentucky Canceled Due To COVID-19 Issues

Saturday night's matchup between the Texas Longhorns and the Kentucky Wildcats has been canceled due to COVID-19 Issues within the Kentucky program.

Matt Galatzan | Jan 29, 2021

The Texas Longhorns trip to Lexington to take on the Kentucky Wildcats on Saturday has been canceled, due to COVID-19 issues within the Wildcats program.

The game was scheduled as part of the annual Big 12/SEC Challenge.

The Longhorns released a statement on the cancelation on Friday morning, detailing the reasoning behind the cancelation:

The Kentucky men’s basketball program has been put on a 48-hour pause, including the cancelation of Saturday’s game against No. 5/5 Texas, due to a combination of positive testing, contact tracing and subsequent quarantining of individuals within the program.

The decision is consistent with Southeastern Conference COVID-19 and Kentucky Athletics COVID-19 management requirements.

The No.5 Longhorns, who now will be forced to miss three out of their last four games on the schedule due to virus concerns, are coming off of an 80-79 upset loss to the Oklahoma Sooners on Tuesday night.

In that game, Texas had just eight scholarship players available for action and were missing contributors such as Courtney Ramey, Jericho Sims, and Brock Cunningham, as well as head coach Shaka Smart, who tested positive on Monday.

The Longhorns will now turn their attention to a critical conference home matchup against the No.2 Baylor Bears at the Frank Irwin Center in Austin, in what will be the first matchup of the season between the two teams.

The two teams originally had their first matchup scheduled for December 13, but that game was also postponed due to COVID-19 concerns.

CONTINUE READING: Texas Trip To Iowa State Rescheduled For Mid-February

Published Jan 29, 2021

MATT GALATZAN

Matt Galatzan is the Managing Editor and Publisher of Texas Longhorns On SI and Texas A&M Aggies On SI and a long-time member of the Football Writer’s Association of America. He graduated from the University of Mississippi, where he studied integrated marketing communications, with minors in journalism and business administration. Galatzan started in the sports journalism industry in 2014 covering the Dallas Mavericks and SMU Mustangs with 247Sports. He then moved to Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation network in 2020, eventually being taking over as the Managing Editor and Publisher of the Longhorns and Aggies sites a year later. You can find Galatzan on all major social media channels, including Twitter on @MattGalatzan.