Geno Auriemma needs to be better than bizarre postgame actions against South Carolina - ESPN

They don't come any tougher — especially mentally — than Dawn Staley. She didn't, by accident, drive her way out of North Philadelphia to become an All-American, All-WNBA and Olympic gold medal-winning player, and then an iconic, hard-charging national championship-winning coach.

So here's guessing she'll be fine, or already is fine, no matter the strange and wild outburst she endured from Geno Auriemma on Friday after her South Carolina Gamecocks defeated his UConn Huskies 62-48 in the national semifinals.

«We move on,» Staley said on ESPN, still seeming bewildered by what exactly had happened.

Indeed, she and her team move on to bigger and more important things, namely Sunday's national championship game against UCLA, where Staley could win her fourth title as a coach.

Staley shouldn't spend a second looking backward.

It's Auriemma who needs to figure out how to deal with this. Not just in trying to make amends — he issued an apology Saturday (in which he didn't mention Staley by name) that he should have delivered immediately. More importantly, he needs to keep it from ever happening again, because he has too much to lose if he doesn't.

To recap, Auriemma began barking at Staley during the postgame handshake, which should have been congratulatory but instead got contentious. There these two were, shouting in each other's faces, having to be held back by assistant coaches.

It was like some cartoonish WWE bit (it's not like Staley was going to back down, after all). And it was over, what exactly?

Auriemma kept trying to dodge the question postgame before finally saying he was troubled that Staley hadn't shaken his hand before the game (she actually had) and that he had stood around for «three minutes» waiting for her to