INDIANAPOLIS — On a day Geno Auriemma was under fire from many directions, Dan Hurley, no stranger to coaching controversy himself, had his UConn colleague’s back.
“Obviously, I’ve had a negative influence on Geno,” Hurley quipped, after his team beat Illinois 71-62 in the national semifinal Saturday.
Auriemma’s, UConn’s Hall-of-Fame women’s basketball coach, had an uncharacteristic melt-down during and after his team lost to South Carolina, 62-48, in the semifinals, touching off a shouting match with Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley.
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On Saturday, Auriemma issued an apology, saying in part, “There’s no excuse for how I handled the end of the game vs. South Carolina. It’s unlike what I do and what our standard is here at Connecticut. I want to apologize to the staff and the team at South Carolina. It was uncalled for in how I reacted. The story should be how well South Carolina played, and I don’t want my actions to detract from that.”
Hurley, often in confrontations with officials, creates viral video clips on a regular basis. He was booed by much of the non-UConn crowd at the Final Four crowd as he was being interviewed after the game. He can be sensitive to criticism and the image that has been created.
Auriemma has, on occasion, counseled Hurley, which made this role reversal so ironic. Hurley issued a strong defense.
“It’s crazy because Geno has helped me so much,” Hurley said. “Geno, the way he handled the whole thing, such a stand-up game with the statement. He’s one of the classiest people and if anyone should get the benefit of the doubt in the world of sports it’s Geno Auriemma, because he is one of the most authentic, genuine, great people you will ever meet in your life.”
UConn’s Geno Auriemma issues apology for his antics in the midst of huge public opinion backlash
After being Illinois, Hurley was holding a few receipts, calling out those who’d cast the Huskies as underdog even though they beat the Illini by 13 points in November, and noting a few negative things written nationally this week after his minor incident in the Regional Final, when he touched heads with an official after Braylon Mullins’ winning shot.
“Once the game is over, that’s my encore, alter ego, life or death struggle, do what it takes to win the game, coach a certain way in practice, it’s not who I really am as a human being,” Hurley said. “People write articles about me, they rarely come to my games, rarely spend time around my program, they have no idea. They take viral clips of things they see at a game and then they attack me, either personally or my coaching style, and I think it’s a joke. You don’t know who I am.”
The men’s team goes for its seventh championship, its third in four years, on Monday night.
