Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes isn’t apologizing for impassioned postgame speech

Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes isn’t apologizing for her postgame speech, which included a middle finger and an expletive.

The Arizona women’s basketball team stunned top-seeded UConn 69-59 in the Final Four on Friday night to advance to the national championship. But it’s not the victory itself that has people talking, it’s a moment during the Wildcats’ postgame huddle that has drawn plenty of attention.

Arizona’s Final Four victory was the kind of moment that you live for as a player and as a coach. So you can’t fault Arizona head coach Adia Barnes for being extremely enthusiastic after her Wildcats took down arguably the best women’s basketball team in the country to advance to the championship game.

In the moments following the victory, ESPN cameras captured Barnes’ impassioned speech to her team in a huddle, which happened to include a middle finger and an expletive, and it didn’t take long for the moment to go viral.

Barnes addressed the viral moment during a Saturday morning press conference, where she explained that she believed she was sharing a private moment with her team after pulling off the upset. But she also made it clear that she’s not going to apologize for what she said and did.

“I honestly had a moment with my team, and I thought it was a more intimate huddle,” Barnes 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.”

Plenty of people love that Barnes was just being herself, and the Wildcards have earned some new fans that will be pulling for Arizona to once again upset a top seed — this time in Stanford — in the national championship game on Sunday at 6 p.m. ET.

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