Dawn Staley had a heated moment with Geno Auriemma after South Carolina’s Final Four win over the UConn Huskies on Friday. The heated altercation resulted in a lot of criticism for the UConn coach, who later apologized for his behavior via an official statement.
Staley helped the Gamecocks to a 62-48 victory to break UConn’s undefeated streak and secure their own spot in this year’s championship game. However, their hopes of winning the natty were crushed by the UCLA Bruins with a disappointing 51-79 loss on Sunday.
In the postgame presser, Staley was asked whether Auriemma reached out to her after the drama that occurred on the sidelines.
“Dawn Staley on Geno Auriemma allegedly reaching out: ‘That’s a Geno question,'” USA Today’s Meghan L. Hall tweeted. “‘I have not heard from Geno. … It’s UCLA’s day. Let’s keep it there. We’re not gonna damper UCLA’s day with that.’ Says she has 800 text messages. Said Geno maybe in there, but she is unsure.”
The heated verbal spat between Staley and Auriemma occurred during their postgame handshake, with less than a second remaining in the game. The UConn head coach said something that did not sit well with his counterpart. Referees and other staff members had to intervene to calm down the situation.
On Saturday, Auriemma released a statement on UConn’s social media page, apologizing for the incident.
“There’s no excuse for how I handled the end of the game vs. South Carolina. It’s unlike what I do and what our standard is here at Connecticut. I want to apologize to the staff and the team at South Carolina. It was uncalled for in how I reacted. The story should be how well South Carolina played, and I don’t want my actions to detract from that. I’ve had a great relationship with their staff, and I sincerely want to apologize to them,” the statement read.
Dawn Staley gets honest about plans following championship loss to UCLA
After the title game, Dawn Staley said the plan is now to regroup and go back to the drawing board for the upcoming season. She said South Carolina will work on its weaknesses to emerge as national champions next year.
“We’re used to winning, and we’re used to winning at a pretty high clip,” Staley said. “We just try to wake up every day and just be better than we were the day before. To get here is hard. To win is harder, right? We just have to keep getting here and make adjustments when we don’t win. Obviously, we got smacked today. We got to figure out how we smack back and put ourselves in the position where we’re hoisting the trophy at the end of the day.”
Staley has won three national championships with the Gamecocks since taking over in 2008.
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