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A month after his heated confrontation with South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, UConn’s Geno Auriemma is still wrestling with what happened – and what it might mean for how he’s remembered.
The incident unfolded after the Gamecocks handed the Huskies a 64-48 loss in the Final Four. Auriemma approached Staley in a moment that drew widespread criticism, and though he apologized quickly, the relationship between women’s college basketball’s two most prominent coaches remains strained.
Now, speaking publicly about it for the first time in weeks, Auriemma says the guilt hasn’t gone away.
“When I walked into the locker room afterward with the coaches, you are just shaking your head, thinking five more seconds, you couldn’t keep it in for five more seconds. You just feel dumb for the way that it played out. We are all human, and we all do dumb [stuff].”
He says he missed most of the backlash as it unfolded – but he’s aware it’s following him.
Auriemma Worries About His Legacy
“I think maybe some of it was warranted, and some of it was people have been lying in the weeds waiting for that moment. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done for the game; it is what you just did.”
That’s the part that seems to sting the most. Auriemma has built one of the most decorated careers in college sports history at UConn, and he’s now watching a single moment threaten to overshadow it.
He also pushed back – carefully – on how the reaction played out in the media.
“The people who understood what it was all about in a different light, they are not going to go on the air and say it… I brought the criticism on myself. I didn’t bring the [stuff] that came after it on myself.”
Drawing a Parallel to an Old Controversy
To put things in context, Auriemma reached back to one of the earlier controversies of his career – the Nykesha Sales situation, where he arranged for the injured star to score an uncontested basket so she could break UConn’s career scoring record. The backlash then was fierce too.
“Immediately, it was the worst thing to ever happen to the game of basketball and to sports in general.”
His point was clear: he’s weathered this kind of scrutiny before.
“These things that happen, you take them all with a grain of salt, understand them. I did what I did, I apologized for it, and I moved on.”
Moved on – maybe. But the way Auriemma keeps circling back to the incident suggests it’s not quite behind him yet.
