Geno Auriemma had plenty to say during Friday’s Final Four loss to South Carolina — and he’s standing behind most of it.
The UConn head coach went after the officiating crew and took direct aim at Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley during a sideline interview with ESPN’s Holly Rowe in the final minutes of a 62-48 defeat.
“There were six fouls called that quarter — all of them against us,” Auriemma told ESPN’s Holly Rowe on the broadcast. “And they’ve been beating the [expletive] out of our guys down there the entire game. I’m not making excuses, ’cause we haven’t been able to make a shot. But this is ridiculous.
“Their coach rants and raves on the sideline and calls the referee some names you don’t want to hear. And now we get 6 to 0, and I got a kid with a ripped jersey, and they go, ‘I didn’t see it.’ Come on, man. It’s for a national championship.”
The Hall of Fame coach kept going after the final buzzer, too, blasting Staley in his postgame press conference.
“For 41 years I’ve been coaching and, I don’t know, 25 Final Fours. The protocol is before the game you meet at half court. Anybody see that before? Two coaches meet at half court and they shake hands, correct? You ever see it? They announced it on the loud speaker,” Auriemma said. “I waited there for like three minutes. So it is what it is.”
He also made clear he wasn’t walking back a single word of what he told Rowe during the broadcast.
“I don’t have any regrets for what I said to Holly Rowe. Why would I? I’ve been coaching a long time – I’ve never have a kid change their jersey because somebody ripped it.”
Needless to say, this whole situation led to a lot of reactions on social media.
“Take your L, which doesn’t stand for LIE!” one fan wrote in a post on X.
“Sore loser. As usual,” another added.
“Really bad example set by Geno tonight,” someone else wrote.
“You have to be a coach, not a fan! You have to look forward not backward!
Geno’s expletive laced angry rant to Holly Rowe at the end of Q3 showed that he was in no frame of mind to successfully coach the 4th quarter,” another person added.
It is worth noting that UConn’s athletic department later released a statement in which Auriemma apologized, though the apology appeared to be directed at his confrontation with Staley on the sideline, not his on-air comments to Rowe.
“There’s no excuse for how I handled the end of the game vs. South Carolina,” Auriemma said in the statement released by UConn. “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.”
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