‘I Will Beat Geno’s A**!’: On Dawn Staley, Black…
Source: C. Morgan Engel / Getty
The backlash following UConn coach Geno Auriemma’s outburst at South Carolina coach Dawn Staley in the closing seconds of their national semifinal matchup on Friday night time has drawn a appreciable quantity of media consideration and assist from followers of both groups. Coach Auriemma sparked the heated exchange by allegedly accusing Coach Staley of not shaking his hand before the sport, an accusation refuted by a video aired by ESPN that exhibits the 2 exchanging handshakes.
As Staley walked away from Auriemma, she yelled, “I will beat Geno’s ass,” a line that has since gone viral with at least one sports activities bar including the phrase to its marquee.
In an interview on Saturday, one of Coach Auriemma’s former star gamers, retired WNBA participant Diana Taurasi, downplayed the exchange between the rival coaches, saying it was nothing more than “two people competing at the highest level that have a tremendous amount of respect for each other.”
But, for many Black ladies, Auriemma’s habits displays a acquainted dynamic many of us have encountered in the office where no matter how onerous we work, we still face discrimination and disrespect from white colleagues.
Many of us are taught before we set foot in our first workplace jobs that to be a Black lady in the office means we’ve got to work twice as onerous to be twice as good, only to get half as far.
According to a 2020 research launched by Lean In and McKinsey and Company, Black ladies “experience a wider range of microaggressions” and are “more likely to have their judgment questioned in their area of expertise and to be asked to provide additional evidence of their competence.”
As a longtime newsroom chief who has occupied top high degree editorial positions at some of the top news organizations in the nation, I’ve skilled this more instances than I can rely. I’ve had my editorial judgment questioned in methods and with a degree of veracity my white friends don’t expertise. I’ve never been accused of not shaking somebody’s hand before a recreation, but I’ve skilled managers dwelling on minutiae unrelated to my work and calling into query my personal ethics and professionalism.
Over the past a number of many years, Coach Dawn Staley has emerged as a legendary determine in ladies’s basketball who has shown she’s prepared to work twice as onerous.
The four-time U.S. Olympic gold medal winner (three as a participant and one as head coach in 2021) performed seven seasons in the WNBA, and for most of those seasons, she concurrently coached Temple University’s ladies’s basketball staff.
In 2008, Staley joined the University of South Carolina Gamecocks as head coach, and she constructed this system into the powerhouse it’s today. During her tenure, the Gamecocks gained their first national championship in 2017, adopted by two more championship wins in 2022 and 2024.
Staley’s successes have earned her the distinctive distinction of being the only particular person to win the distinguished Naismith Award as both a participant and a coach. Twice as good, certainly.
What makes Auriemma’s accusations all the more appalling is that Staley has also confirmed to be twice as sort behind the scenes. She’s earned a fame for exhibiting compassion and care that goes past what might moderately be labeled as good teaching or good sportsmanship.
After the Gamecocks defeated the Southern University ladies’s basketball staff at the start of this 12 months’s March Madness match, she gifted the Southern University gamers with Louis Vuitton fragrance. When requested by a reporter what prompted her offering, she explained that it was a small gesture for the gamers after a couple of the younger ladies had complimented her and requested her what scent she was sporting.
Staley is also recognized for greeting the long line of people seated courtside in the media row, one thing she did prior to the start of Friday’s UConn recreation.
When reporters requested Auriemma to remark on what had occurred in the ultimate seconds of that recreation, he stood by his phrases and actions and withheld an apology for his habits. He didn’t really feel it was warranted.
While Auriemma was standing his ground, Staley continued to show up as she always has. During the UCLA v. Texas matchup that adopted her staff’s win, she was seen in the stands graciously posing for photos and signing autographs for followers.
In an interview early Saturday, Auriemma was requested by a reporter if he had a personal relationship with Staley, and he said “Nah, not really. We don’t have a lot in common.” While Auriemma went on to say he revered the work Staley had achieved to construct the Gamecocks basketball program into the strong program it’s today, his dismissiveness about whether or not the 2 had a personal connection was at best peculiar and at worst pointless.
It is well-known that faculty basketball coaches spend a appreciable quantity of their personal time pondering, speaking, and obsessing over basketball. As coaches of elite groups, Auriemma and Staley compete for the same titles and live the same year-round grind and high stress that only a handful of equally located coaches can relate to and perceive.
While I don’t count on rival coaches to be best buddies, Auriemma might have chosen not to reply to that half of the query and merely shared how a lot respect he has for Staley as a coach. After all, Auriemma is a seasoned coach and well-versed in how to maneuver powerful questions from reporters. He knew better.
The framing Auriemma selected, coming from a white coach about a Black lady coach, echoes a acquainted sample for Black people in the office. We are subjected to offhanded remarks, and our excellence is handled as a separate slightly than shared expertise, even when the work, stress, and stakes that go into attaining success are nearly an identical.
According to Lean In’s 2025 annual report on Women in the Workplace, these distinctive stressors for Black ladies in the office are taking a toll on our health. The researchers famous that “almost 8 in 10 senior-level Black women have been frequently burned out in the past year, and even more are concerned about their job security– more than other senior leaders.” This, at a time when corporations are more and more seeing variety and DEI as a legal responsibility, and labor data show that Black ladies are going through increased charges of unemployment when in contrast to the final population. More than 300,000 Black ladies grew to become newly unemployed in 2025, a sharp rise.
After calls for for Auriemma to apologize reached a fever pitch, on Saturday afternoon, UConn launched a assertion from Coach Auriemma that read in half, “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.” He then supplied a broad apology to “the staff and the team at South Carolina,” saying his response was “uncalled for.”
Missing from Auriemma’s apology was any direct point out of Staley, one thing that a broad cross-section of followers, celebrities, and sports activities fanatics took issue with on social media. Several demanded that he issue another assertion and apologize to Staley immediately. His assertion once again detracts from Staley and her staff’s success.
As the late Toni Morrison once explained:
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
For Geno Auriemma, on Friday night time, that “one more thing” was his accusation that Coach Staley missed a pre-game handshake. That unwieldy accusation prompted the press and followers alike to go on the hunt and offer up video footage that would possibly show whether or not she missed one or both customary pre-game handshakes. On Saturday, that “one more thing” was a lackluster assertion from Auriemma when Staley deserved a real (and direct) apology.
What this “one more thing” distracted from was the fact that Dawn Staley outcoached him and her staff outplayed his. He robbed Staley and her staff of the same old celebratory cheers and hugs at the end of a double-digit win. His habits left no space to give the Gamecocks credit for their win against a staff that had gone undefeated for 54 video games before South Carolina single-handedly snapped their successful streak and ended their desires of back-to-back championship wins.
He also distracted from the same old post-game analysis of what would have absolutely included data illustrating the Gamecocks weren’t only better ready but the better staff. The analysis would have included praising the stellar protection performed by Gamecocks’ senior Raven Johnson, who is positioned to be a first spherical decide in the upcoming WNBA draft.
As the viewership and fan base of ladies’s basketball continue to increase, and with Morrison’s phrases in thoughts, the purpose is that we should always not fall into the behavior of litigating every second or handshake, but to return to what this is actually about.
Sunday, a championship recreation is occurring between the South Carolina Gamecocks and the UCLA Bruins. This recreation will likely be coached by two phenomenal ladies and the gamers who take the court are all members of primary seeded groups. They are enjoying at the very best degree of a sport that has never been more seen, more aggressive or more consultant of its followers and this nation.
So, as I sit down and watch the 2 groups duke it out for a championship ring, I will likely be maintaining focus on where it belongs, on the sport, and the people on and off the court who continue to elevate it. Oh, and GOOOOO Gamecocks!
Now somebody please run me one of those “I will beat Geno’s ass” t-shirts. Whether the Gamecocks win or lose, I’m sporting it through next season.
The post ‘I Will Beat Geno’s A**!’: On Dawn Staley, Black Women, And Disrespect In The Workplace appeared first on GWN.
