ACC Network won’t have its featured basketball game Tuesday. The #20 Duke Blue Devils’ road game against the Pittsburgh Panthers, which had been set for an 8 p.m. ET tipoff on ACCN, has now been postponed following a positive test within the Panthers’ program. Here’s more on that from Kyle Boone of CBS Sports:
Tuesday evening’s scheduled ACC showdown between Duke and Pittsburgh has been postponed after a positive COVID-19 test and subsequent quarantining and contact tracing within Pitt’s program, the ACC announced Monday. A rescheduled date has not yet been set.
Pittsburgh last played on Dec. 22 against Louisville, but it did so without coach Jeff Capel, who contracted the virus and was forced to miss the game against the Cardinals. Capel returned to practice on Monday and was photographed with a mask just hours before the team reported the new positive test.
This was set to be the Blue Devils’ first game since their conference opener against Notre Dame (a 75-65 win, seen above) on Dec. 16. They announced ahead of that game that they’d cancelled the rest of their non-conference schedule (a scheduled Dec. 19 game against Gardner-Webb and games against Elon and Charleston Southern that had previously been postponed) to let their players go home for Christmas and focus just on their conference slate. Now, they’re not set to play until Saturday’s game against Florida State.
It’s unclear what ACC Network will do to replace this game. This was supposed to be the second half of a doubleheader, following Miami facing #24 Virginia Tech at 6 p.m. ET. The other ACC game on the night is #18 Florida State at Clemson, but that’s set for a 7 p.m. ET start on Fox Sports South. So ACCN may wind up with non-game programming following Miami-Virginia Tech. And that’s an unfortunate loss for them, as this Duke-Pittsburgh game likely would have drawn pretty well, especially with it being the Blue Devils’ first game since the 16th.
[CBS Sports; photo from Matt Cashore/USA Today Sports]
