Conferences are scrambling to replace protocols to replicate the brand new variant. Most, together with each Power 5 convention, have rescinded current guidelines that had deemed any cancellation due to coronavirus protocol to be a forfeiture by the uncovered staff. What stays to be seen is whether the N.C.A.A. will amend its 25-game requirement for event eligibility within the occasion that groups are usually not capable of reschedule sufficient canceled video games.

No. 4 Arizona hadn’t performed a recreation since Dec. 17 due to coronavirus publicity amongst its personal gamers. Now, the Wildcats received’t play once more till at the very least Friday as a result of the staff’s first two convention opponents, Southern California and U.C.L.A., have had exposures of their packages. Arizona may have had 4 video games canceled or postponed at a second many extra cancellations appear imminent — and which may create a risk to the staff’s postseason alternatives.

Undefeated groups throughout the Power 5 enter convention play with one thing to show.

Three Division I groups stay undefeated. One, Arizona, performed within the 2021 title recreation. The different two, although, have stunned opponents and onlookers by avoiding defeat, and can take double-digit win streaks into their robust convention schedules.

The Colorado Buffaloes have already received as many video games — 11 — as they did in the course of the 2020-21 season due to environment friendly taking pictures from ahead Mya Hollingshed, a 2022 W.N.B.A. draft prospect, and Quay Miller, a switch from Washington. The staff has additionally used fast palms to pad its margins of victory by way of a reasonably simple nonconference schedule: It is averaging 12.5 steals per recreation, which, in response to Her Hoop Stats, is the ninth most amongst Division I groups.

The Buffaloes completed the 2018-19 season on the backside of the Pac-12, with only one win within the convention. Two years later, they knocked off top-ranked Stanford in extra time — their first win towards a No. 1 staff, their first win towards the Cardinal and the primary of simply two losses Stanford, the eventual nationwide champion, posted that season. Now, Colorado is searching for its first successful convention season, and its first journey to the N.C.A.A. event, since 2013.

No. 24 North Carolina is 13-Zero and has the most important common margin of victory — 32.three factors per recreation — in Division I. The Tar Heels have proved they will rating, but their greatest asset is their protection: So far, the staff has allowed solely 4 opponents to attain greater than 50 factors. North Carolina has but to face a ranked opponent, but that may change on Thursday with a recreation towards No. 5 North Carolina State. A victory over the staff’s (different) in-state rival would possibly sign a return to type for this system, which hasn’t been to the spherical of 16 since 2015 after competing deep within the N.C.A.A. event all through the 1990s and 2000s.