The Latest on the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on sports around the world:
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The San José Sharks finally know when they are returning home.
The team said Wednesday that it will return to the Shark Tank in San José for home games against Anaheim on Feb. 13 and 15 and play the remainder of the home schedule there without fans.
The Sharks will still play their first two scheduled “home” games of the season in Arizona against Vegas next week, even though Santa Clara County lifted its ban on contact sports earlier this week.
The Sharks say they need to work out several health and safety issues before returning to the Bay Area.
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The Patriot League men’s and women’s basketball games between Boston University and Holy Cross scheduled for this weekend have been postponed due to a rise in positive COVID-19 tests with the return of students for spring semester.
The BU Department of Athletics and its varsity programs will immediately undergo a pause of all athletic activities for the remainder of January.
The games will be rescheduled following discussions between the schools and league office.
Also, the Holy Cross and Colgate men’s basketball teams have moved their two-game series to this weekend with both games played at Hart Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. The contests were previously scheduled for Feb. 13-14.
Colgate originally was slated to play Army, but the games were postponed earlier this week due to a positive COVID-19 test result within the Army men’s basketball program’s Tier 1 personnel.
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The St. Louis Blues are the latest NHL team to allow a limited number of fans into home games.
The team says up to 1,400 people will be allowed at its next set of home games Feb. 2-7.
As of now, the Blues would be the fifth NHL team to allow fans into their arena, joining the Florida Panthers, Arizona Coyotes, Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators. Nashville allowed only a couple of hundred fans for its game Tuesday night, the first with them in the building.
Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said before the season began that Pittsburgh and Columbus were among the other teams making plans. The defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning originally planned to host 3,800 fans a game but postponed that because of a spike in COVID-19 cases in the area.
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UConn says it has postponed its next two men's basketball games, including Thursday’s scheduled contest with No. 3 Villanova after learning that an official who worked its Tuesday night win over Butler has tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Huskies have been placed in a daily testing protocol and a modified quarantine that also will prevent them from traveling to New York for a game at St. John’s on Sunday. The school says it won’t play another game until it is deemed safe by medical professionals and other postponements are possible.
These will be the ninth and 10th games on the Huskies schedule that have been either postponed or cancelled because of concerns related to the novel coronavirus.
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The University at Albany men’s basketball team has been placed on a temporary pause following a presumptive positive COVID-19 test within the team’s Tier 1 personnel.
The length of the pause will be determined pending additional test results and contact tracing.
The move comes after its league, the America East Conference, announced plans to revise its schedules every two weeks to deal with COVID-19 issues.
Last week, members of the University of Vermont’s women’s basketball team decided not to continue their season and opted out, disrupting the league schedule.
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