The Connecticut Huskies stunned the Duke Blue Devils with a 73-72 victory in the Elite Eight that featured an incredible last-second three-point shot from Braylon Mullins. What most college basketball fans didn’t notice in the moment was something that has since gone viral.
UConn head coach Dan Hurley appeared to bump heads with referee Roger Ayers shortly after the Mullins three-pointer.
That led to many college basketball fans — and NBC NFL rules analyst Terry McAulay — saying that there should have been a technical foul called on Hurley.
However, ESPN college basketball analyst Seth Greenberg claims that Ayers told him “nothing happened” and sounded confused about what he was even talking about on Monday.
“First of all, Roger Ayers is the best official in all of college basketball,” Greenberg, a former college basketball head coach, said to SportsCenter anchor Matt Barrie. “He’s a tremendous communicator. And he [refereed] a time of my games. There were games he put his arm around me, walked me back to my bench. There were times where he said, ‘Seth, that’s enough.'”
“But that situation right there, that is absolutely nothing,” Greenberg continued. “I talked to Roger today. He said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He literally didn’t know what I was talking about. He said, ‘Nothing happened. The ball went in. I was running back. They were celebrating. Danny leaned in, said something to me. I said something to him. It was absolutely nothing.'”
“So, you’re saying that was [Hurley] fired up in his own way, in the moment?” Barrie said.
“And an official interacting with him,” Greenberg interjected.
Greenberg explained that he also spoke to Hurley about the incident on Monday.
“I spoke to Dan as well,” Greenberg said. “And Dan said he didn’t understand what was going on. He has so much respect with Roger. He’s never had a problem with him.”
“That was social media trying to create something out of nothing because of Dan Hurley’s ‘allegedly’ reputation.”
“He’s a fiery guy,” Barrie responded. “So, the reputation precedes itself.”
And to Barrie’s point, Hurley has had numerous on-court and media blow-ups, including an incident earlier this month in which he appeared to bump referee John Gaffney and was ejected during a UConn game at Marquette. So, it’s not like college basketball fans just formed these opinions about Hurley and his antics out of thin air.
But, according to Greenberg, Ayers claimed that Hurley did nothing wrong in this instance.
About Matt Clapp
Matt is an editor/writer at The Comeback and Awful Announcing.
He can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.