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The controversial finish to Friday’s national semi-final between Iowa and Connecticut ended one of the most anticipated games in women’s college basketball history on a sour note and kicked off a furore on social media.
Caitlin Clark and the Hawkeyes held on for a 71-69 win in the women’s Final Four before a sold-out crowd at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, aided by a disputed offensive foul call on Aaliyah Edwards on the Huskies’ final possession as they trailed by one point with five seconds remaining.
The call returned possession to Iowa and forced UConn to foul, sending Clark to the line. The star guard, who finished with 21 points, made one of two free throws to account for the final margin and once the Hawkeyes grabbed an offensive rebound on her miss, Iowa were able to keep possession until the final buzzer.
“I wasn’t given an explanation,” Edwards said of the moving screen call. “There was no real time to get an explanation for it. My point of view, it was pretty clean.”
The officials saw it differently.
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James was among the biggest names to take objection to the decision, writing on X: “NAAAAAHHHHHH!!! I ain’t rolling with that call.”
NAAAAAHHHHHH!!! I ain’t rolling with that call.
— LeBron James (@KingJames) April 6, 2024
That sentiment was echoed by Rudy Gay, a 17-year NBA veteran following a decorated college career at UConn, who wrote, simply: “You can’t call that!!!”.
Two more UConn alumnae to object included former Huskies stars Swin Cash and Renee Montgomery. Cash called it “unacceptable” while Montgomery posted “LET THE PLAYERS DETERMINE THE GAME!!” A third, Diana Taurasi, the longtime Phoenix Mercury point guard and five-time Olympic gold medalist, was even more pointed.
“That was a terrible call,” Taurasi said on ESPN’s alternative broadcast with Sue Bird. “We always talk about, ‘let the players decide the game,’ especially a benign call like that where you really didn’t even affect the player. They still got over the screen. It’s just tough to end a game like that.”
Angel Reese, the LSU star whose Tigers were eliminated by Iowa in the Elite Eight on Monday and who declared for the WNBA draft in Vogue two days later, wrote: “wait was that screen not set clean?”.
Kelsey Plum, the two-time WNBA champion with the Las Vegas Aces whose all-time Division I scoring record Clark broke earlier this year, wrote: “To call that on a game deciding play is so wrong WOW”.
The outcry was not limited to the basketball world. Entertainers and athletes from other sports were eager to chime in at the finish of a game that will no doubt threaten the viewership benchmarks set by Monday’s record-setting Iowa-LSU contest.
Gabrielle Union, the actor and wife of 13-time NBA all-star Dwyane Wade, called the decision “some ol bs” before adding: “I hate the end of that game. That’s a damn shame. Iowa came to play and so did UConn.”
You can’t call that!!!!!! That’s some ol bs
— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) April 6, 2024
Micah Parsons, the two-time All-Pro linebacker with the Dallas Cowboys, wrote: “Nah they rigging this!! You can not call that!!”
Not everyone was zeroed in on the contentious finish. The rapper and producer Travis Scott paid tribute to both teams with a series of tweets.
“Hats offf tooo whoever’s handling WNCAA right now. These girls are play the most turnt basketball ever on my mama”, Scott wrote, adding, “I DONT CARE WHAT YOU DOING EVERY BODY GOTTA WATCH THE FINALS SUNDAY. MOOOVIIIEEEEEEE”.
Meanwhile, UConn coach Geno Auriemma had issues with the call but did not believe it decided the game.
“Whether they were right call, wrong call, we had no control over the call on the screen,” Auriemma said. “But we had control over whether we got the rebound or not. So we had an opportunity at the very end, and if we secured that rebound, now we have one more chance to win the game, and we didn’t do it.”
