What Manny Diaz said about Miami’s situation (COVID-19) on available players for Duke
First things first.
Manny Diaz went on WQAM radio Monday morning to talk about everything from how he’s feeling (sounds a lot better) during his bout with the coronavirus to how many of his several players who tested positive for COVID-19 will be back this week for practice.
The Canes (7-1, 6-1 Atlantic Coast Conference), along with the rest of the public, learned Sunday night that the ACC inserted a game at Duke (2-7, 1-7) into their schedule for 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, to replace Wake Forest, which can’t play because of a COVID-19 outbreak.
WQAM host Joe Rose: “Do you expect to have most everybody back for this Duke game?”
Diaz: “Obviously we’re always waiting. We still have [coronavirus] tests. So you’re always waiting on the tests and we never take those for granted.
“We know we won’t have everybody back just through some of the counts of what we’re waiting on. But as things go well, like we knew when we planned talking to the league we felt like we should have certainly enough to go play the game.
“The way we practice will be a little bit modified this week in terms of our ability to get guys back on certain days during the week but we got enough to go play Saturday. If we continue to do the right thing and keep the virus out of our building we should be ready to go.”
UM is starting to slowly work its way into a socially distanced practice mode this week before leaving for Durham, North Carolina on Friday — that is, if at that point the COVID-19 situation is controlled enough to field a viable team. The players, who haven’t played since Nov. 14 at Virginia Tech, will all be tested at least three times this week.
Rose: “Can you do me one favor? Can you keep [quarterback] D’Eriq King away from the rest of your team?”
“Yeah,” Diaz said. “He’s worth protecting. I’m with you, man. Protect him at all costs. I get it. Football is more fun with a quarterback.”
The Hurricanes, ranked 10th in last week’s initial College Football Playoff rankings and ninth in the AP and Coaches polls, have had their own significant COVID-19 outbreak, having had to miss the past two Saturdays because so many players were unavailable.
“From a meeting standpoint, everything has been on Zoom,’’ Diaz said. “Everything has been remotely. And we have been able to, sometime midway through last week, we’ve been able slowly bring players back in just for basically socially distanced workouts. Basically we started like what we did back in June.
“We just kind of went right back to basics. We’ve got different guys that are at different points of clearance in terms of their ability to come back and their workout ability, so [strength and conditioning coach] Dave Feeley and his staff have started to work with our guys to get them back into some sort of conditioning shape.
“That’s always the part that you’re concerned about, to get us in shape and then just the speed of the game having not played a game in so long.”
This story was originally published November 30, 2020 at 8:26 AM.
