Right after Braylon Mullins eliminated the Duke Blue Devils from the Elite Eight with his 35-foot 3-point shot, UConn Huskies head coach Dan Hurley had an intimidating moment with referee Roger Ayers.
With the game-winning shot coming with only 0.4 seconds left, Hurley started celebrating and walked towards Ayers. He pressed his forehead against the referee and stared him down.
While social media started making interpretations on why this might have happened, both Hurley and Ayers have since shut down any misunderstandings among fans.
The Huskies’ head coach thought Ayers was coming towards him to celebrate the shot. On his recent appearance on The Triple Option podcast, Hurley clarified that he didn’t mean to intimidate the referee.
“At that point in the game, we had it won,” Hurley said. “And, he’s such an easy guy to work with during the game that I thought he was coming over to chest bump me to celebrate the shot because it’s not like that for me with him. That, in no way, was like me and a ref that I had been at their throat the whole game. Other points of the game, I had my arm around him, walking out of the timeout. We were cracking jokes and laughing.“
Talking about the moment, Hurley compared it to a “reindeer nuzzle,” not aggression.
“It was not, well — head hug? I don’t know. You ever see reindeer where they kind of, with each other’s nose … more of a nuzzle, an affectionate nuzzle,” Hurley said on “Pardon My Take.”
On the other hand, Ayers also downplayed the moment, claiming that he didn’t remember the incident. ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg talked to him and reshared what the referee told him about the controversial moment.
“He’s a tremendous communicator. And he refereed a ton of my games. There were games he put his arm around me, walked me back to my bench. There were times where he said, ‘Seth, that’s enough,’” Greenberg said Monday on ESPN.
“But that situation right there, that is absolutely nothing. I talked to Roger today. He said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He literally didn’t know what I was talking about. He said, ‘Nothing happened. The ball went in. I was running back. They were celebrating. Danny leaned in and said something to me. I said something to him. It was absolutely nothing.’”
What If It Wasn’t Just Playful Moment Between Dan Hurley and Roger Ayers?
UConn Huskies won with Braylon Mullins’ shot, but Dan Hurley could have poured boiling water over it with his controversial moment with Roger Ayers. According to NCAA rules, no coach or member of the coaching staff is allowed to contact officials in any way. Should that happen, a technical foul is charged against the respective coach’s team.
In this case, UConn would be given a technical foul, allowing Duke two free throws and a possession. If Duke had converted both free throws, they would have won the game since they were only trailing by one point.
However, Ayers didn’t think the moment warranted a technical foul. Not that he thought, because he can’t even recall the moment. Safe to say, Hurley survived a massive failure at the expense of his own team.
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