NCAA Basketball

Geno Auriemma Got Caught Patting Baylor Coach Kim Mulkey’s Butt, But Everyone Was Totally OK With It

No. 1 Baylor beat No. 3 UConn Monday night in Connecticut in arguably the biggest game of the women’s college basketball season. But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because before the game, Huskies coach Geno Auriemma was caught in the act of patting opposing coach Kim Mulkey’s butt, as you can see above. It truly is one of the photos of the year, as Yahoo! proclaims.

If you don’t hear the following postgame exchange, though, this could easily be construed as some sort of photography trick. Auriemma could be looking at the ground. Mulkey could be talking to her assistant coaches, in the background. Auriemma could be innocent! A legendary coach couldn’t be a butt-toucher, could he?

Thankfully, the Connecticut Post’s Rich Elliott asked Auriemma about the exchange after the game and got an explanation for the unusual scene. Auriemma clarified it was a lighthearted, harmless moment between two longtime friends.

“She was staring at my butt and she was commenting on it and I said, ‘Really? How about yours?’” Auriemma told the Post. “She went, `Yeah, look at it,’ and I went (slap), ‘I’ll teach you a lesson.’ And then she started talking about how she only dated Italians her whole life and that she wanted me to set her up with some Italians and I said `The Italians I send to see you aren’t going to date you.’ We’ve had a long and great relationship since, gosh, she was an assistant at Louisiana Tech. It goes back a long ways.”

Again, this was before the game. Remember all this when people freak out at Rob Gronkowski for slapping Jim Harbaugh’s butt after losing next year’s Super Bowl.

[The Dagger]