Louisiana Tech Head Coach Skip Holtz blames Hurricane Laura for an outbreak in coronavirus cases among the football team. The Bulldogs were supposed to kick off the season playing Baylor on Saturday in a nationally televised game. Holtz says it is a disappointing development since they had run a clean shop all through practice.
“We went three weeks with one test and then in the last nine days since Hurricane Laura came through Ruston we’ve had 36 positive tests and it just takes too big of a toll and the depth chart wasn’t large enough,” said Holtz.
Holtz says players were trying to find suitable accommodations following the storm and that lead to many of them being infected by the virus.
“I don’t think that anybody understood what the hurricane and no power for five days did to our football team who were sleeping on couches, trying to find air conditioning, some of them even came up here and slept in the building,” said Holtz.
Holtz is hopeful that if the infected players do not have any complications that show up on an EKG, that up to 30 of the 36 players could return in time to play their next scheduled game on September 19th against Southern Miss.
“All of the sudden you go from 47 to 77 and all of the sudden it has got a completely different picture to it and you’ve got enough depth on your depth chart. What I can’t answer is how many more people are going to test positive between now and then,” said Holtz.
No makeup date has been set for the matchup with Baylor.
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