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One month after his awkward and intense altercation with South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, it appears that UConn’s Geno Auriemma still can’t shake the memory of the incident.
Auriemma came under fire for accosting Staley following the Gamecocks’ 64-48 upset victory over the Huskies in the Final Four. Despite immediately issuing an apology, it sounds as if the relationship between the sport’s two most famous coaches is still on rocky footing.
Now, Auriemma says that he still feels guilt for how he handled the incident, and he’s doing his best to move forward from it.
Geno Auriemma Fears Dawn Staley Incident Could Tarnish His Legacy
“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 told reporters on Monday. “You just feel dumb for the way that it played out. We are all human, and we all do dumb [stuff].”
Auriemma noted that he didn’t see most of the backlash to his behavior. But more importantly, he’s concerned that it’s something that will now follow him throughout the rest of his coaching career and beyond.
“I didn’t see a lot of it, but that is to be expected,” he 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.”
Now He’s Trying To Move Forward
When discussing the reaction to the incident, Auriemma immediately compared it to a moment early in his tenure at UConn, when he arranged a situation for injured star player Nykesha Sales to make a basket in order to 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.”
While Auriemma says he’s moved on, it sure sounds as if he’s still dealing with the weight of the situation and how it could affect him and his legacy moving forward.