Empire 8 set to begin men's and women's basketball season in March

The Empire 8 Presidents Council agreed to begin conference play for the men's and women's basketball seasons on March 1, setting a date for the Utica College team's to begin.

Announced when it expects to begin the men's and women's basketball season.

March first is the date to circle on the calendar when the e-8 will commence conference play.

Earlier tonight i said this would apply to the winter sports of indoor track and swimming and diving.

However - i've gotten clarification that conference competition in those sports have not been finalized just yet.

The empire eight said that the march first start date is tentative and will depend on the status of the coronavirus pandemic and the guidance from state and local health departments at the time.

The date was unanimously agreed upon among the conference's presidents' council.

Tonight - we're getting reaction from utica college athletics regarding the latest plan.

David fontaine: my thought is that they were thinking we wanted to preserve the season, we want to make sure that we have competition.

January 25 our classes start, it's a little different at other institutions but this gives us time for our students to come back after the holidays to prepare appropriately and then to move into the season.

Especially for our student athletes and our coaches that have been on this emotional roller coaster that we've had, we've been training, we've had to posit, we've unpause and restarted training, and got a pause again and there are other institutions that haven't even been able to put their teams players in a position where they can train so it's been a roller coaster but they have that date i think puts a lot of people at ease, most notably our student athletes and our coaches.

This decision does not apply to the pioneers' hockey programs - as they they play in the u-c- h-c which as of now is set to begin conference play in january.

Schedules for the basketball teams have yet to be announced.

Former syracuse football all- american defensive