University of Southern California coach Lindsay Gottlieb walked off the floor Wednesday night after her team’s Big Ten road win over Maryland, and her mind was somewhere else.
“We’ve been on the road for whatever it is now, five days, and our city is on fire,” Gottlieb said to open the postgame press conference. “It’s been hard to be away and watch those scenes. So I just want to send our thoughts and prayers to the first responders, to those impacted, and I have friends that have been displaced, and I know that our players probably do, too. So that’s more important than what we’re doing.”
Apocalyptic wind-driven fires are devastating the Los Angeles area, and impacts are wide, including on the local athletics teams.
UCLA head coach Cori Close lives in the canyons near the school’s campus. Her home, as of Thursday, was safe, as the winds blew away from her home.
“Our team and staff are all safe and okay, relatively speaking,” Close stated via text on Thursday. But several close donors, she said, have lost their homes.
At UCLA, undergraduate classes are cancelled and graduate classes have gone remote. UCLA is scheduled to play Sunday against Northwestern.
“UCLA Athletics continues to monitor conditions on campus and at athletic sites to determine impact on activity,” UCLA issued in a media advisory Thursday afternoon. “No determinations have been made for Sunday’s women’s basketball matchup in Pauley at this time.”
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On Wednesday, Pepperdine University announced that the women’s basketball game originally scheduled against Portland on Thursday would be postponed and rescheduled.
Access to the Pepperdine campus, which is located about 2.5 miles from the fire perimeter, is restricted. The school also experienced a campus lockdown due to a wildfire in December. The campus is currently closed to make way for emergency vehicles, while most students remain away for winter break.
The ongoing Palisades Fire is not currently posing a threat to Pepperdine, but high winds continue to be a part of the weather forecast into the weekend.
Loyola Marymount University, located near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), is not directly threatened by the fires. Still, the school’s game on Thursday night against San Diego has been postponed due to air quality concerns.
Gottlieb told The Next she was “proud of our grit on the road.” But, she is thinking about close friends who have evacuated and one who lost her home.
“This is so awful,” Gottlieb said.
After USC’s win, Gottlieb said she received a text from one of her staff members, saying that “your team provided us a good two hours of not thinking about what’s going on. And I think without really knowing it, that’s what this team does, right?
“We have a perspective that basketball isn’t everything. But when these 40 minutes are in front of us, it’s everything to us in that moment.”
