JUST IN: Carleton cancels women's basketball season

The university cited low roster numbers as the reason behind the cancellation

The Carleton women’s basketball season has been cancelled before it really even began. The news of the season-opener against North Central being called off came about on Friday. Now less than a week later, the entire season has been done away with, as the program had low roster numbers, with just six medically-cleared players currently.

Per NCAA policy, and according to a Carleton press release, all scheduled games against Carleton will be counted as “no contests”.

"I am heartbroken for each of these women," said Carleton head coach Tammy Metcalf-Filzen in a press release. "They have done everything they could to make this work, to sacrifice for their teammates.

“But the reality is that playing games two or three times a week simply was not sustainable with the number of healthy players who remained. As coaches, we are already focused on preparing our players for next season as they will be practicing as their health allows throughout the remainder of this season."

Just 10 players were on the roster to begin the season, and a series of injuries lowered that number to six. We saw this situation happen at Rose-Hulman a season ago, with too few players available for the season to continue. It is certainly a disappointing turn of events, and while this is unconfirmed, I would assume that everyone currently on the roster could apply for an NCAA waiver to maintain this year of eligibility, considering Carleton never played a game. But with the comment made by Metcalf-Filzen about practicing through the remainder of the season, I am unsure how that dynamic would play out, if players are practicing through the year, but not playing games.

I will work to answer some of these questions soon. Unfortunate news for Carleton. As a side note, this also means that Pacific and George Fox have each lost a non-conference game, and each of the MIAC programs will lose two scheduled games. But as these will not be counted as wins or losses, it should not affect the win percentage or strength-of-schedule of those scheduled Carleton opponents.

D3hoops.com Story: https://d3hoops.com/notables/2023/11/carleton-women-cancel-season