WHO'S THE HEEL?

Pro wrestling used to (it still might, I haven't been paying attention) add entertainment value by scheduling matches between heroes and heels.  Years ago, the heel often had some sort of implied Cold War connection (if you're familiar with Rocky Balboa fighting Russians, that might be where the scriptwriters got the idea) which latterly turned into some sort of Middle Eastern connection.  Or sometimes it could be middle-aged white dudes talkin' trash, and sometimes they switched roles, such as when Black Jack Lanza had a grudge match with Doctor X, who was revealed as a wrestler called Bruce Marshall.  And politics borrows a lot from pro wrestling, something that Donald Trump grasps, and for all I know, Margaret Brennan might lean into her role as a heel.

What happens, though, when Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma gets into a slanging match with Dawn Staley, his counterpart at South Carolina?

Geno Auriemma made a beeline down the sideline as the final seconds ticked away in the national semifinal Friday, asUConn's previously undefeated season ended in a 62-48 loss. As he approached South Carolina coach Dawn Staley for a postgame handshake, Auriemma angrily let loose a string of words while demonstratively pointing his index finger at the floor.

Staley seemed shocked for a moment before the two started to bark at each other and were separated. As Auriemma finished shaking hands with a few South Carolina assistants, Staley doubled back to continue the fracas, shouting and stepping toward the Huskies coach before her staff members blocked her path and circled her at the scorer's table. She continued to yell toward the UConn bench before walking away toward her own.

"I will beat Geno's ass," Staley could be heard saying twice.

It is in the nature of coaching to work the referees, and it is also in the nature of coaching to gripe about how effectively the other coach has worked the referees.

The emotions seemed to boil throughout the women's Final Four semifinal for Auriemma. During an interview with ESPN's Holly Rowe going into the fourth quarter, he lamented the lack of fouls against South Carolina and said Staley "rants and raves" at the officials and "calls the referees some names you don't want to hear." UConn finished with 17 fouls, compared with eight against South Carolina.

"They've been beating the s--- out of our guys down there the entire game," Auriemma said. "I'm not making excuses, 'cause we haven't been able to make a shot. But this is ridiculous."

>UConn star Sarah Strong had to change into a No. 55 jersey after her No. 21 was torn, and Auriemma questioned how there wasn't a single foul called against South Carolina in the third quarter. One angle of a video showed Strong ripping her own jersey, but it was unclear whether it was initially torn in any way. She called it an accident.

As far as I know, there was not a foreign object in somebody's jersey, chair-throwing is a Bobby Knight schtick, and there's no top rope for someone to illegally come off of.  Did Ryan Young, whose report was picked up by Yahoo Sports, combine editorializing with reporting?

UConn entered Friday night’s contest, which was a rematch of last season’s national championship game, with a perfect 38-0 record.

Staley, who is wrapping up her 18th season with the Gamecocks, was spotted badgering the officials repeatedly without any repercussions earlier in the game. It’s unclear what Auriemma is referring to specifically with the “names” that he said Staley called the referees.

The Gamecocks, despite entering halftime down by two, controlled the entire second half to pick up the 14-point win. They outscored the Huskies by seven points in the third period to take the lead, and then held UConn scoreless for more than four minutes down the stretch to break the game open. UConn ended up shooting just 31% from the field and was led by Strong’s 11 points and 12 rebounds in the loss.

Later that day, which was the Saturday before Easter,  Mr Auriemma said his Act of Contrition.

"There's no excuse for how I handled the end of the game vs. South Carolina," Auriemma said in a statement issued through the school. "It's unlike what I do and what our standard is here at Connecticut. I want to apologize to the staff and the team at South Carolina. It was uncalled for in how I reacted. The story should be how well South Carolina played, and I don't want my actions to detract from that. I've had a great relationship with their staff, and I sincerely want to apologize to them."

But Dan Wolken, another contributor to Yahoo Sports, suggests that, apology or not, Mr Auriemma is the heel.  (This despite the script in wrestling where the heel loses more frequently than he wins).

As 72-year-old Geno Auriemma charged into his Final Four postgame handshake with Dawn Staley on Friday night, hopped up on grievance and delusion, we should all be thankful his staff had the wherewithal to hold him back from an even uglier escalation.

How close were we to a Hayes-esque moment that would have ruined the legacy of a 12-time national championship coach? It’s a blessing for women’s basketball and college sports in general that we will never know the answer.

But what happened in the wake of UConn’s 62-48 loss to South Carolina, ending their perfect season, needs to be a wake-up call to everyone who cares about Auriemma and a UConn administration that has become far too tolerant of boorish sideline behavior with both of its basketball coaches.

If this is what it’s going to look like as Auriemma ages into his mid-70s — embittered, petty and aggressive toward a rival coach, not to mention one of the most respected women in sports — it is not a spiral that should be playing out in public.

Hopefully Auriemma has enough people who care in his orbit to tell him the truth: If what happened Friday night is where he’s at in the latter stages of his career, if that’s how he’s going to handle losing after 1,288 wins, it is time to think seriously about ceding the stage.

That can’t happen again. And yet, as Auriemma did rounds of interviews after the incident, his defiance, petulance and inability to own up a truly disgraceful moment, is worrisome.

That's what sixty-plus years of deconstructing bourgeois norms gets you, what would you expect of university administrators who once cracked down on "inappropriately directed laughter?"  And in the broader scheme of things, a temper tantrum by a college basketball coach isn't as serious a breach of decorum as a presidential negotiation by social media is.

But Mr Wolken must have been indoctrinated by that sort of Student Affairs type once, as he threw down the sexist card.

Will anyone at UConn be willing and able to sit Auriemma down and make that clear? Or will they just stand by and wait for the next Final Four game that goes sideways, cross their fingers and hope their legendary basketball coach doesn’t trip a wire that makes them wish they had acted sooner the way so many around Hayes eventually admitted?

We don’t know, and shouldn’t speculate, about the psychology of a man who has dominated this sport for the last two decades seeing his unbeaten team struggle so badly against a program and a coach who is poised to dominate it for the next two.

We only know what we see, and Auriemma did most of the work for us in his unhinged sideline interview with ESPN at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Swearing, whining about the officials, taking a direct shot at Staley for working the officials — something he’d never do, right? It’s an emotional game, but in that moment, Auriemma seemed beyond emotion.

And as it carried over to the handshake line, then the press conference, it became clear that Staley simply got in his head. You can explain it any way you want, and Auriemma certainly tried with some low-grade manure about pregame handshake decorum, but the bottom line is that he has a problem with her.

“We don’t have a lot in common,” Auriemma told reporters when asked if they had any relationship, continuing on to say that he respected the job Staley has done at South Carolina while making it clear they are not on friendly terms.

Now, why does he have such an issue with Staley? We can only look back to the frosty relationship he had with Pat Summitt when she was his foil at Tennessee. In that case, Summitt gave as much as she got, accusing UConn of dirty recruiting tactics and ending their annual series. But in his 2009 book, Auriemma wrote of Summitt: “Pat gets preferential treatment from everybody, that she’s untouchable, because she’s Pat.”

You can hear echoes of that same mentality in the way he talked about Staley on Friday night, a 72-year-old man trying to coach a game while his mind is fixated on the belief she gets away with things he can’t.

As far as that "poised to dominate it," yes, South Carolina have a solid program, and yes, Dawn Staley does endorsements for Aflac, and yet a new member of the Big Ten administered a lesson in the title game.  We play the games because brackets are made for busting.