Hurricane Milton forces Bucs and Lightning to leave Florida early and other teams to make game changes

The NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning left Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton to practice the rest of the week.

The Bucs left on Tuesday and headed to New Orleans, where they will face the Saints on Sunday. The Lightning traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina on Monday evening to continue preparations for their season opener against the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday evening.

Milton, currently a Category 4 hurricane, is expected to make landfall in the Tampa Bay area Wednesday evening.

The Lightning’s home opener against Carolina is scheduled for Saturday evening and will take place as planned for the time being.

It’s the third time in the last seven years that the Bucs have moved operations to a different area to avoid inclement weather.

In 2020, ahead of Hurricane Ian, they traveled to South Florida to practice at the Miami Dolphins’ training facility before returning home to play against the Kansas City Chiefs. When Tampa Bay’s 2017 season opener against the Dolphins was postponed because of Hurricane Irma, the team chartered multiple planes to take players, coaches and families to Charlotte, North Carolina, to escape the storm.

At the collegiate level, the American Athletic Conference announced that a football game between Memphis and South Florida at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa has been postponed from Friday evening to Saturday. The conference plans to monitor conditions following Milton’s death and make adjustments accordingly.

UCF’s Big 12 home football game against Cincinnati remains scheduled for 3:30 p.m. EDT in Orlando.

The Knights have postponed events in several other sports, including moving the UCF volleyball home game against Colorado from Wednesday night to Sunday. UCF and Arizona moved the venue of Thursday’s women’s soccer game from Orlando to Houston. Since Arizona was scheduled to play in Houston on Sunday and UCF was scheduled to play in Colorado the same day, the teams agreed to play Thursday’s game in Texas.

UCF’s men’s soccer game against Marshall has been postponed from Friday evening to Sunday. Other postponed college events include a women’s soccer game in Boca Raton between Florida Atlantic and Rice; It was supposed to be played on Thursday and will now be played on October 17th.

The LPGA Tour has postponed the qualifying phase of its LPGA Q-Series, which was scheduled for October 13-18 at Plantation Golf and Country Club in Venice, Florida. The tour said it will provide an update on the qualifying tournament once the storm passes.

“Our thoughts are with the entire Florida community as we prepare for the storm,” the LPGA said.

And in the NBA, a preseason game between the Heat and the Atlanta Hawks in Miami — which is not expected to be a hurricane but is likely to see strong wind gusts and several inches of rain — was postponed from Thursday to Oct. 16.

Additionally, countless high school sporting events across Florida have been canceled. In many districts, officials waited to see what would happen to football games scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

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AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno, AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson, AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds and AP Sports Writer Fred Goodall contributed to this report.

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