Regis Jesuit quaratined; 9-1 Raiders will miss 3 games

It hasn’t been a good week -- Carl Mattei had his Sunday ruined and Monday might have been worse. On Sunday, the head coach of Regis Jesuit in Aurora, a day after his team suffered its first loss of the season, was informed the Raiders had to be quarantined after facing a Continental League foe the past week with a player who tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19). On Monday, Mattei, who isn’t personally quarantined, had reality set in as the afternoon came “and I had no practice to go to.” The Class 5A Raiders (9-1 overall) and their coach will have no contact for two weeks, will lose three games and won’t play again until their regular-season finale – on March 5 at Chaparral in Parker. “It’s disappointing,” Mattei said. In yet another confounding aspect of the new Season B, the Raiders and Avery Van Sickle, PGH-Colorado 2021 No. 2 and headed to Washington, beat Heritage on Feb. 18  by a whopping 84-10. Two days later, on Saturday, Regis Jesuit dropped its first game, 67-45 to touted Valor Christian, which has three players in the top 11 of PGH-Colorado 2021, notably [player_tooltip player_id="95124" first="Kindyll" last="Wetta"] (No. 3 and bound for Colorado). Plus, there will be no rescheduling, according to Colorado guidelines. So the Raiders, who are atop the Continental League at 7-0, will miss a nonleaguer against 4A high-ender Holy Family on Tuesday and league matchups against Rock Canyon on Thursday and Mountain Vista on Wednesday, March 3. “There’s nothing we can do about it,” Mattei said. The Raiders have surpassed the seven-game requirement to advance to the now 32-team 5A bracket that will be released on March 8. Since the qualifying formula will be comprised of four different rankings, Regis Jesuit, which has attained a spot as high as third, should land a reasonably high seed.