‘Pat damn sure didn’t like him’ — Candace Parker gets real about her thoughts on Geno Auriemma following apology for Final Four skirmish
UConn’s Geno Auriemma made waves in the last week with his Final Four spat with Dawn Staley. And Lady Vols legend explains why it happened and what she thinks about him.
The UConn Huskies and South Carolina Gamecocks met again in the Final Four, and this time it had a very different ending, both on the scoreboard and in the handshake line afterwards.
A year ago, UConn defeated South Carolina 82-59 in the national championship game, and Geo Auriemma waited for Dawn Staley at midcourt with a smile and open arms.
But last weekend, Auriemma drew a lot of attention for the wrong reason. He went on an expletive-laden rant during the game about the officiating, and after the game, he said something that drew the ire of Staley, leading to the two having to be separated.
Auriemma later issued a pair of statements through the school apologizing for his actions. But former Tennessee Lady Vols star Candace Parker still took Auriemma to task for how he handles things in victory and in defeat, and on her podcast “Post Moves with Candace Parker & Aliyah Boston”, she let it be known about how she feels — and how Pat Summitt felt — about Auriemma.
Candace Parker gets candid about her feelings and those of Pat Summitt towards Geno Auriemma
“When he’s whooping your ass and you are not a threat, there’s grace, right? But every person that has won against him or challenged him, this is kind of what their relationship is,” Parker said. “He don’t like Dawn, Dawn don’t like him. They might respect each other, but they don’t, like – Pat damn sure didn’t like him. And that’s part of the reason why I don’t.
“A lot of people can be gracious when they’re on top and when you know that somebody is not a threat, but it’s the moment that somebody is a threat. And my thing is, Coach Summitt is one of the most respectable people you will ever meet in your life, and she did not mess with Geno. Like didn’t mess with him.”
It’s never easy to handle defeat, but that’s a part of sports, and coaches are expected to handle it with some level of grace and professionalism. And looking at the last two years, in the Final Four and the divergent way in which things played out for UConn and Auriemma, it’s hard to argue with what Parker is saying here.
Both sides will move on, and it’s likely UConn and South Carolina will cross paths again, given both are near the top of the sport. But, if UConn and Auriemma are in a similar spot again, one certainly has to wonder which version of Geno we’ll see in that moment: the repentant and more humbled version we’re seeing in the apology, or the one we saw on the court in Phoenix last weekend?