As a wave of COVID cases continues to drastically impact the sports world this holiday season, a quartet of Pac-12 conference games next week were postponed on Friday.

Both USC and UCLA, due to COVID issues within their own respective programs, announced that upcoming games against Arizona and Arizona State have been postponed.

The Bruins were scheduled to play home games against the Wildcats on Dec. 30 and the Sun Devils on Jan. 1. Rescheduled dates for both contests will be announced at a later date, the program announced. Team activities for the Bruins remain paused.

UCLA has opened its season 8-1, but it hasn’t played a game since Dec. 11, a 67-56 win over Marquette on the road. It had a game against Washington a week earlier postponed, and then games against Alabama State (Dec. 15), North Carolina (Dec. 18), and Cal Poly (Dec. 22) canceled outright.

Two days ago, the Pac-12 announced it had amended its game cancellation policies with regards to COVID-19-related situations. Rather than forfeits occurring for teams who cannot field the minimum of seven scholarship players available for a game, the league has reverted back to policies it used during the 2020-21 season. Teams will be allowed to make up games that need to be postponed. That policy also retroactively applied to the entire conference slate for the 2021-22 season, turning UCLA’s forfeit to Washington on Dec. 5 to a postponement.

As for USC, it too has been on pause because of virus concerns within the program. The Trojans (12-0) got off to an outstanding start to their season, but have been on pause since confirmed COVID cases emerged prior to the team’s trip to Oklahoma City to face Oklahoma State on Dec. 21. That game was canceled on Dec. 19.

USC was scheduled to host Arizona State on Dec. 30 and then Arizona on Jan. 2. New dates for those games will be announced at a later date.

The next scheduled game for both of the Arizona schools will be when they face each other on Jan. 8 at Desert Financial Arena. A tipoff time hasn’t yet been decided. The Sun Devils (5-7) last played on Sunday, when they lost at home to San Francisco 66-65. Arizona was in action this past Wednesday, dropping its first game of the year to Tennessee, 77-73, to move to 11-1 on the season.

Fans who had tickets for any of the four games will still be able to use those same tickets for the rescheduled meetings.