Auriemma says he felt ‘dumb' for the way exchange with Staley played out following Final Four game
Six weeks after his team lost to South Carolina in the Final Four, UConn coach Geno Auriemma said Monday that he felt “dumb” for how his heated postgame exchange with Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley played out in front of a national audience.
“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,” Auriemma said in his first news conference since then.
“You just feel dumb for the way that it played out,” he added. “We are all human and we all do dumb (stuff).”
Auriemma sparked a firestorm of criticism after he went over to Staley in the final seconds of South Carolina’s 62-48 victory at the Final Four in Phoenix and appeared to chastise her.
Coaches from both teams had to separate them. When the game finally ended, Auriemma walked off the court to the locker room without going back to shake hands with anyone from South Carolina.
Auriemma said the exchange was about the lack of a traditional pregame handshake between the coaches. He later apologized with a written statement.
“I didn’t see a lot of it, but that is to be expected,” Auriemma said of the backlash. “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.
“Unfortunately, that is the world that we live in today and it usually is one-sided. 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. They are not going to write about it because now they are going against a major internet or media frenzy; they are not going to do that. I brought the criticism on myself. I didn’t bring the (stuff) that came after it on myself.”
Auriemma compared the backlash to what might have happened if social media had been around in 1998, when he arranged for an injured Nykesha Sales to make a basket so she could set the program’s career scoring record.
“Immediately, it was the worst thing to ever happen to the game of basketball and to sports in general,” Auriemma said.
“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.”
His focus now is on the 2026-27 season. Despite the loss of two starters, including WNBA No. 1 overall pick Azzi Fudd, the Huskies figure to be one of the top title contenders again.
Transfers Serah Williams and Kayleigh Heckel played pivotal roles for the 38-1 UConn team in the 2025-26 season. He opted not to add any transfers and rely on the returning players, led by national player of the year Sarah Strong and two incoming freshmen.
“People have to get better,” Auriemma said. “You want your players to get better and improve from one year to the next. Blanca (Quinonez) going from playing 17 minutes a night to playing 27-30 minutes a night, I think changes the dynamic of the team. Sarah (Strong) probably getting more touches, probably playing 30 minutes per game.
Auriemma said that Strong has declined opportunities to play for USA Basketball this offseason to recover from inflammation in her leg that kept her out of most practices during the postseason.
“The new kids that are coming in are going to give us a little bit of a different look than we had. We have really good guards on our team but none of them are exactly what Jovana (Popovic) is; our big kids are going to get better. Olivia (Vukosa) is a little different than what we have right now. We will look a little different, but the core of the team is back.”
UConn also brings back Morgan Cheli, who played at least 15 minutes nine times as a freshman before missing all of last season with an ankle injury.
___
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball
From breaking news and local politics to art exhibitions, live music, high school sports, small businesses, and cultural events, we celebrate the people and places that make Connecticut unique.