​In a recent interview, South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley addressed her heated interaction with UConn coach Geno Auriemma in the 2026 Final Four.Staley was a guest on “Grey Matter with Declan Kelly” on Oct. 21 and opened up about the moment Auriemma accused her of not shaking his hand pregame and his confrontation postgame.”In the moment, I really didn’t understand what he was saying because I shook his hand,” Staley said. “… When it was time to shake hands at the end, I don’t know, he said something, and I’m like, ‘What? Did I just hear what I just heard?’ I said, ‘I shook your hand,’ and then he went on and on. My blood’s boiling at this point because he just called me a liar.”Staley continued, saying she believes Auriemma’s reaction had more to do with his team’s 62-48 loss that ended their season and less to do with whether she shook his hand pregame.”I think Geno really thinks it’s about the handshake, and it has very little to do with the handshake,” Staley said. “I respect him. I respect what he’s done for the game, and I think he’s a genius of a coach. Understand this, when we played UConn, whether I was at Temple or here at South Carolina, and they were the overarching favorites, and they played that way and they beat us (by) 20, 30, 40 points I made a point to always, after the game shake his hand, look him in his eye, congratulate him and move on.”I did it. I purposely made myself do that, even though, I probably was thinking and feeling some other way because I hate losing. … But I made a point to do that because I knew the more we played them, the more we’ll get acclimated to playing them, I thought that we would beat them at some point. And that’s what started to happen. And I think probably that moment … it all came out. I am a sore loser like that as well. I am. But I try to keep it under control because we are leaders of young people, and we have to set the tone and example of how we lead, and especially in moments like that.”Staley said she did shake his hand at some point prior to the start of the game, which was captured on video. She noted that contrary to previous games she’s been a part of, there was no pregame conversation with the operations team that mentioned a handshake at center court immediately before tip-off.”Sometimes, they’ll bring up the fact that before the game, like after starting lineups, the coaches will come to half court, and they’ll shake hands,” Staley said. “And this Final Four, for some reason … no one in my camp said, ‘We’re going to do this right before tip-off.’ So after the introduction of the starting five … I just went right in our huddle, and I didn’t know he was standing and waiting for this handshake.”Auriemma later issued a public apology for his actions. In July, when asked on a podcast if things were good between the two of them, Auriemma responded, “Yeah, why wouldn’t we be?”Staley and Auriemma will match up for the first time since that incident on