the two exchanged words<\/a>. Assistant coaches got between them and moved Auriemma away. He walked off the floor after the game and did not go through the handshake line with Staley or anybody from South Carolina, instead leaving for the locker room before any of players or coaches.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2269724786-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n South Carolina coach Dawn Staley and UConn coach Geno Auriemma exchange words near the end of their game on Friday. (Christian Petersen \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
After all of the drama, the Gamecocks are heading back to the championship game and will play the winner of No. 1 UCLA and No. 1 Texas on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Gamecocks pulled the upset over top-seeded UConn by stifling a Huskies\u2019 offense that has been scoring at will this season.<\/p>\n
UConn averaged 87 points per game this season, led by player of the year Sarah Strong, but couldn\u2019t get much going against South Carolina\u2019s aggressive and physical defense.<\/p>\n
Strong scored just 11 points. All-American Azzi Fudd had just 8 points and shot 3 of 15 from the field, and the entire Huskies\u2019 offense shot just 31 percent from the field.<\/p>\n
South Carolina didn\u2019t shoot much better, just 37 percent from the field, but the Gamecocks\u2019 defensive versatility gave UConn issues throughout the game. It\u2019s why even after making just four shots in the second quarter, the Gamecocks were trailing by only two points at halftime.<\/p>\n
The third quarter changed the game for South Carolina, though. Though their defensive intensity continued, holding UConn to just 29 percent shooting, its offense woke up.<\/p>\n
The Gamecocks shot 46 percent from the field in the third quarter and made 8 of 10 free throws to take a 10-point lead with three minutes left in the quarter.<\/p>\n
Facing its largest deficit of the season, UConn answered with back-to-back-to-back 3-pointers, but as it did throughout the game, South Carolina answered with a run of its own. The Gamecocks scored four straight to take a five-point lead into the quarter break. The frustration turned into a quarter-break rant from Auriemma.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were six fouls called that quarter, all of them against us. And they\u2019ve been beating the s\u2013t out of our guys down there the entire game,\u201d he said during an in-game interview with ESPN\u2019s Holly Rowe. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not making excuses because we haven\u2019t been able to make a shot. But this is ridiculous. Their coach ran some rage on the sideline and called the referees some names you don\u2019t want to hear. And now we get 6 to 0, and I got a kid with a ripped jersey. And they go, \u2018I didn\u2019t see it.\u2019 C\u2019mon man, this is the national championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was unclear whether a South Carolina player had made an initial tera on Strong\u2019s jersey, but after a pause in action following her missed shot, she tore the jersey from the neckline. After the game, Strong said she ripped her jersey \u201cby accident<\/a>.\u201d She changed jerseys on the sideline. Auriemma said after the game that he was frustrated with the lack of fouls on South Carolina players defending Strong.<\/p>\nSouth Carolina never let UConn back into the game in the fourth quarter. Instead it pulled away in the final minutes and got its revenge after last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 One of the first things South Carolina saw every morning during the offseason was the score…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,6133,231,772,1544,40252,6135],"class_list":{"0":"post-697205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-connecticut-huskies","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab","14":"tag-south-carolina-state-bulldogs","15":"tag-womens-college-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116344551994946856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}