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In Friday night’s remarkable Final Four game between Geno Auriemma’s undefeated UConn squad and the South Carolina Gamecocks, Auriemma faced a familiar foe: Dawn Staley.
Over 18 years, Staley, the head coach at South Carolina, has faced Auriemma dozens of times. But their experience together precedes Staley’s South Carolina tenure. In 2000, Staley was a member of the USA Olympic basketball team, and Auriemma served as an assistant coach.
Sixteen years later, they would coach an Olympic team together in Rio. Considering their extended history with one another, including the “tremendous respect” Geno has said he has for her, it came as a shock to many to hear what Auriemma had to say about Staley during last Friday’s game:
“They’ve been beating the sh*t out of our guys down there the entire game,” Geno Auriemma told a reporter. “This is ridiculous. Their coach rants and raves on the sideline, and calls the referees names you don’t want to hear.”
While a shock to witness in real-time, it wasn’t a complete surprise.
Playing The Same Card
In 2023, Geno Auriemma complained about South Carolina’s physicality after the Gamecocks beat UConn in the regular season. Staley took offense to his complaint:
“We’re called something other than players that are locked in” [when we win]. But “they play the right way,” she said of her team. “We don’t denounce anybody’s play… and when we were getting our heads beat in by UConn for all those years, I said nothing.”
Later in 2023, Staley returned to the Final Four. By then, Geno’s team was no longer in it. However, the story he helped create was still very much alive. After a loss, Dawn was asked to share “the truth about [her] team” amidst accusations that they were “bullies.”
“We’re not bar fighters. We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters,” she responded. “This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball on the court and off the court.”
She continued: “So don’t judge us by the color of our skin. Judge us by how we approach the game. And you may not like how we play the game; you may not like it, that’s the way we play. That’s the way I coach. I’m not changing.”
Three years later, neither Dawn nor South Carolina has changed. In Friday’s game, they were relentless on defense, holding the Huskies to under 50 points for the first time in four years. Unlike Dawn, however, something did shift with Geno. The respectful tone he previously showed toward Staley disappeared.
As time was running out on South Carolina’s impressive 62-48 win, the camera panned to Geno Auriemma, who was lashing out at a shocked Staley and accusing her of not shaking his hand before the game–which she did. Auriemma then walked off the court and went to the locker room as the final buzzer rang on his team’s season, skipping the customary handshake line with his players and snubbing South Carolina.
Auriemma provided little explanation of his actions. “I said what I said,” he shared. “I don’t regret anything I said” [in the mid-game interview]. In another postgame interview, he was asked if he has a relationship with Staley.
“No, not really,” he said, shaking his head. “We don’t have a lot in common. … I have a tremendous amount of respect for… what she’s done at South Carolina.”
A Tired Narrative
Absent from Geno’s actions, however, was a respect for Dawn Staley as a person and coach. And he continued to double down. “Here in Connecticut, we’ve won so much that I think we know how to win…with class… with dignity, and… with humility,” he said he told his team after the game.
Talk of “class,” “dignity,” and “humility” might sound like neutral terms on the surface, but they are infused with racialized undertones. Black players and teams who make a habit of winning confidently are regularly accused of being classless and arrogant. South Carolina is no stranger to these accusations.
For Auriemma, Staley apparently doesn’t deserve the same freedom to display a kind of fiery intensity that defined one of his bitter rivals, Pat Summitt.
“Kim is Kim,” Geno once said of four-time champion Kim Mulkey’s outbursts, but Staley receives his underhanded comments about winning with humility. She was a ranting, raving, and angry Black woman who called referees names that would make you shudder.
Dawn has addressed this portrayal before, including the double standards she navigates as a Black coach. Geno made her words prophetic. If Auriemma is looking for a double standard, he can find it by looking in the mirror.
Geno Auriemma has consistently failed to reign in his words about the game’s most decorated Black coach. He lacks the self discipline and reflection expected of a White man in a woman’s game that has more Black players than any other racial group. For this failure, he has made a mockery of the game he says he wants to grow.
Geno Auriemma was Outcoached and Outclassed
Geno Auriemma might be the winningest coach, but that doesn’t mean he owns the women’s game. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean he should get a pass for his disrespect and humiliation of the greatest Black woman head coach the game has seen.
No one can question Geno’s impact. That is precisely why his actions towards Staley and his subsequent failure to take accountability for them after the game are so alarming.
On the game’s biggest stage, he took the spotlight away from Dawn Staley, who has grown the game in ways Geno could never do. In a moment where Staley was stepping forward to shine, Geno stepped on her moment and made it about himself. He publicly denigrated and demeaned Coach Staley for allegedly breaking protocol, while he did the same.
Even in his subsequent statement the day after the game, he could not bring himself to say Dawn Staley’s name and apologize to her directly. Staley, on the other hand, took the high road, displaying a respect for the game that Geno lacked.
Geno Auriemma was not just outcoached on the biggest stage. He was outclassed. His team didn’t have an answer for South Carolina, and he didn’t have an answer for his actions. Dawn Staley put “BTA” on Geno in more ways than one, and in response, Geno chose to show his own a*s instead of tipping his hat to the Black woman who got the best of him.
