Geno Auriemma rants about South Carolina fouls: ‘Been beating the (expletive) out of our guys’
South Carolina beats TCU, advances to Final Four to play UConn
South Carolina women’s basketball and coach Dawn Staley beat TCU in the Elite Eight and will now play UConn in the Final Four.
As two stalwarts of women’s college basketball faced off in Phoenix’s Final Four, a few coaching titans were also going at it.
Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks and Geno Auriemma’s UConn Huskies were locked in a tight battle entering the fourth quarter, when Auriemma gave a shockingly fiery sideline interview at a point where South Carolina had 14 free throws to UConn’s two.
After Holly Rowe asked about Sarah Strong’s ripped jersey, Auriemma replied: “There were six fouls called that quarter. All of them against us. They’ve been beating the (expletive) out of our guys down there the entire game. Now I’m not making excuses because we haven’t been able to make a shot, but this is ridiculous.”
Strong is seen ripping her jersey herself on the broadcast, as SportsCenter posted.
Auriemma then invoked Staley.
“Their coach (Staley) 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. Come on man. This is for the national championship,” before turning away from the interview. Auriemma’s tirade can be viewed here.
Auriemma and Staley are the two most recognizable coaches in women’s basketball, and have had a mutual respect in the past. Indeed, when the Huskies dominated the Gamecocks in the 2025 national championships, Auriemma and Staley embraced after the game with Auriemma comically waving his arms.
With 0.1 seconds left in the game, Auriemma and Staley got into it at halfcourt, with Staley telling Auriemma “don’t do that!” repeatedly. After the game, Staley walked over to the UConn bench with her hands up while Auriemma stormed off the court without shaking hands, despite doing so before their altercation.
“I have no idea,” Staley told Rowe when she was asked what happened postgame. “But I’m going to let you know this, I’m of integrity. I’m of integrity. So if I did something wrong to Geno, I had no idea what I did, I guess he thought I didn’t shake his hand at the beginning of the game, I didn’t know. I went down there pregame, shook everybody on his staff’s hand, I don’t know what we came with after the game. But hey, sometimes things get heated. We move on.”
Video showed on the postgame show showed that Auriemma and Staley did, in fact, shake hands pregame. So it remains unclear exactly what set off the fuse between the two as time wound down.
