Auriemma reflects on spat with Staley: 'You just feel dumb' - ESPN

STORRS, Conn. — A little more than a month after Geno Auriemma's UConn women's basketball team's title bid ended with a Final Four loss to South Carolina, the coach reflected on his heated postgame exchange with Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley.

«When I walked into the locker room afterward with the coaches, you are just shaking your head, thinking five more seconds, you couldn't keep it in for five more seconds,» Auriemma said. «You just feel dumb for the way that it played out. We are all human, and we all do dumb [stuff].»

Auriemma went over to Staley in the final seconds of South Carolina's 62-48 victory in Phoenix and appeared to chastise her. Coaches from both teams had to separate them. When the game finally ended, Auriemma walked off the court to the locker room without going back to shake hands with anyone from the South Carolina team.

Auriemma's behavior generated more buzz than South Carolina's impressive defensive effort that shut down a UConn team with two first-team All-Americans.

«I didn't see a lot of it, but that is to be expected,» Auriemma said of the backlash. «I think maybe some of it was warranted, and some of it was people have been lying in the weeds waiting for that moment. It doesn't matter what you've done for the game; it is what you just did.

»Unfortunately, that is the world that we live in today, and it usually is one-sided. The people who understood what it was all about in a different light, they are not going to go on the air and say it. They are not going to write about it because now they are going against a major internet or media frenzy; they are not going to do that. I brought the criticism on myself. I didn't bring the [stuff] that came after it on myself."

Auriemma compared the