Geno Auriemma felt ‘like a dumbass’ after Final Four blowup with Dawn Staley, not worried about impacts to legacy

Geno Auriemma was very harsh on himself as he walked into the locker room after their Final Four loss to South Carolina. 

It wasn’t the loss that was dominating the moment, though. Instead, it was his interaction and blowup with South Carolina coach Dawn Staley.

“When I walked in the locker room afterward, the coaches were shaking their heads, ‘You couldn’t hold it in for five more second?’” Auriemma said on Monday, via the Hartford Courant. 

“And you feel like a dumbass for the way it played out. We’re all human and we all do dumb [stuff].”

Auriemma had to be physically pulled away from Staley in the final seconds of the Huskies’ 62-48 loss to the Gamecocks in the Final Four. The two got into it, and Auriemma ended up walking off the court on his own without shaking the Gamecocks’ hands.

The incident apparently stemmed from Staley not shaking Auriemma’s hand and meeting him before the contest, though ESPN showed footage in the moment of the two doing just that.

Auriemma stood by his behavior in the moment, saying that he “just told the truth.” He eventually issued a statement, but did not name Staley, and then addressed it again days later. He said the two had spoken about the incident, he apologized to her, and agreed to move on. 

“I’ve lost more games in the Final Four than any coach in history. But Friday I lost something more important,” he wrote, in part. “I lost myself.”

Auriemma not worried about his legacy

Auriemma is undoubtedly one of the best and most accomplished coaches in basketball history. 

He’s been at UConn since 1985, and turned the program into the dominant powerhouse in the sport. The Huskies have won 12 national titles under his watch and reached the Final Four 25 times. He’s also the winningest coach in college basketball history, men’s or women’s, with 1,288 wins to his name. 

While his incident with Staley certainly dominated the conversation around the Final Four this spring, Auriemma isn’t worried about any long term impacts it may have about him. It wasn’t the first incident he’s been apart of, and, even though he’s now 72 and undoubtedly nearing the end of his career, it may not be the last.

“These things that happen, you take them all with a grain of salt and understand them,” Auriemma said. “For me, I’m at an age now, not to say you couldn’t care less what people think about you, because we’re all human beings and we all have feelings about what we did or what we should have done, what people think of you. I think that never goes away.

“But in terms of how I’m going to be viewed? I don’t give two s**ts about that. I did what I did, I apologized for it and moved on.”