Sports
Michigan State postpones athletic events after campus shooting – USA TODAY
EAST LANSING — In the grand scheme, it is an afterthought considering the magnitude of the events Monday night at Michigan State University. But the Spartans’ next men’s basketball game has been postponed.
It is unclear when or if MSU will make up Wednesday night’s previously scheduled home game against Minnesota as the school, students and faculty attempt to process a shooting on campus that resulted in three fatalities and five other serious injuries, along with the death of the suspect identified as the potential alleged shooter.
Other events postponed are a home men’s tennis match against Drake and a women’s basketball game at Purdue, also both originally scheduled for Wednesday. The university canceled all other campus activities and classes for at least Tuesday and Wednesday.
It remains unclear if anything beyond that will be postponed or delayed. The Spartans men’s basketball team is next scheduled to play 8 p.m. Saturday at Michigan. Less than three weeks remain in the Big Ten’s regular season.
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“I am positive that the leadership at both schools will consider all possible situations and make a thoughtful decision on this,” University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker tweeted early Tuesday morning. “The next 48 hours are going to be excruciating for so many families and that’s really where the focus should be.”
MSU officials postponing athletic events due to the shooting falls in line with how other schools the past two decades proceeded after similar incidents.
Fifteen years ago, on Feb. 14, 2008, a man shot and killed five Northern Illinois students and injured 17 others before taking his own life. The school canceled all athletic events home and away for the next three days, including two home basketball games.
Following a shooting Nov. 13, 2022, that killed three football players and injured another, the University of Virginia canceled its final two football games of the season and a men’s basketball game against Northern Iowa scheduled for the day after the incident.
Big Ten schools have not experienced a campus shooting of this significance since Nov. 1, 1991, when a former University of Iowa graduate student shot and killed five faculty members and injured another before the gunman died by suicide. The Hawkeyes’ football team played on the road the next day and won at Ohio State.
