Arizona Wildcats women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes said Saturday that she has nothing to apologize for after cameras caught her using a middle finger and dropping an f-bomb following a 69-59 win over UConn in the Final Four.
Barnes responded on Twitter by saying she couldn’t contain her excitement even if it was “not the best look.”
In her postgame news conference, Barnes admitted “I did say a cuss word. The cuss word is basically, ‘Forget everybody. … Forget everybody if they don’t believe in us, because we believe in us.'”
Barnes said during a zoom call on Saturday she thought she was sharing a private moment with her team after pulling the upset.
“I honestly had a moment with my team, and I thought it was a more intimate huddle,” she said. “I said to my team something that I truly felt and I know they felt, and it just appeared different on TV, but I’m not apologizing for it because I don’t feel like I need to apologize. It’s what I felt with my team at the moment. I wouldn’t take it back. We’ve gone to war together. We believe in each other. So I’m in those moments, and that’s how I am, so I don’t apologize for doing that. I’m just me, and I have to just be me.”
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral NCAA stories via Google! Follow Us
“After going round by round, winning more, getting more love and then thinking that we finally got some respect, and obviously the video, other stuff that happened, it kind of was like a dagger,” Arizona forward Sam Thomas said. “So I think now we’re just, we’re in it for ourselves. If people want to support us, we love it. If people want to hate us, I mean, we’re in the national championship, so what more can you say?”
Not many people gave Arizona a chance to defeat UConn, but that’s exactly what they did in dominate fashion.
