This weekend’s Big Ten tournament semifinal men’s hockey matchup between the Gophers and Penn State will be played in front of zero fans as the Penn State University has acted swiftly to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The semifinal game will be played Saturday at 6 p.m. in University Park, Pennsylvania, and all fans who purchased tickets will be provided refunds. Fans are not be allowed at any Penn State home athletic competitions. The only people allowed to PSU competitions are:
- Essential personnel as designated by Penn State Intercollegiate Athletics
- Participating student-athletes, coaches and staff
- Families of participating student-athletes, coaches and staff
- Media
- Penn State recruits.
The University of Minnesota has not made a similar move to ban fans from sporting events, but it has moved all courses to online-only through at least April 1.
There are five confirmed cases in Minnesota as of Wednesday afternoon.
Minnesota defeated Notre Dame last weekend to advance out of the quarterfinals, with the decisive Sunday game played in front of an announced crowd of 2,039 fans inside 3M Arena at Mariucci, which has a capacity of 10,000.
“We regret that our fans will not be able to attend the affected home events. However, many of those competitions will be shown live on Big Ten Network, the ESPN family of networks or BTN2Go,” PSU said in a release.
Gopher hockey fans can watch the game on Big Ten Network, stream it on the FOX Sports app, or listen to it on AM 1130 KTLK or on the 103.5 FM HD frequency
