Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley have tense postgame exchange after South Carolina shocks UConn in Final Four
· Yahoo Sports
South Carolina beat undefeated UConn 62-48 in Friday night’s semi-final of the NCAA Women’s Tournament, ending the Huskies’ winning streak at 54 games and securing a return trip to the national championship game.
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UConn coach Geno Auriemma and South Carolina coach Dawn Staley had a heated exchange at the end of the game.
As the two went to shake hands with 0.1 seconds left, Auriemma appeared to go to shake Staley’s hand and began yelling in her direction. Staley responded with words of her own. Assistant coaches went to calm the two sides, and UConn inbounded the ball to end the game.
Staley went to shake hands with UConn staffers while Auriemma headed for the tunnel without appearing to shake the hands of any South Carolina players or coaches. Players from both teams shook hands before the UConn players sprinted up the tunnel.
“I’m of integrity. So if I did something wrong to Geno, I had no idea what I did,” Staley told ESPN’s Holly Rowe in the postgame interview. “I guess he thought I didn’t shake his hand at the beginning of the game. I went down there pregame, shook everybody on his staff’s hand. I don’t know what he came with after the game, but hey, sometimes things get heated. We move on.”
At the beginning of the fourth quarter, Auriemma gave a heated mid-game interview to Rowe, airing his frustration about officiating.
“There were six fouls called that [third] quarter, all of them against us. And they’ve been beating the s--- out of our guys down there the entire game. And I’m not making excuses for us, 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 six to zero and I got a kid with a ripped jersey and [the referees] go ‘I didn’t see it.’ C’mon, man. This is for the national championship.”
Ta’Niya Latson led all scorers with 16 points. The Gamecocks put on a dominant defensive display, limiting the Huskies to just 22 points in the second half. National player of the year Sarah Strong was held to just 12 points for UConn, and Azzi Fudd had eight points.
This is a developing story that will be updated.