What seemed like a heated, controversial interaction was just a moment of affection between two people with a long-standing relationship.
So claims Dan Hurley, the UConn coach who went forehead to forehead with referee Roger Ayers in the aftermath of Huskies freshman Braylon Mullins hitting a miracle March Madness 3-pointer with less than one second remaining to defeat Duke and send the Huskies to the Final Four.
“It was not, well — head hug? I don’t know. You ever see reindeer where they kind of, with each other’s nose … more of a nuzzle, an affectionate nuzzle,” Hurley said Wednesday on “Pardon My Take.”
Hurley, who is trying to lead UConn to a third national championship in four years, has a fiery personality and has been hard on referees, but he insists there was no ill intention behind the viral moment.
“With Roger — see, all these refs are different. They’ve all got different thresholds or personalities,” Hurley said. “Roger’s very playful. The guy is one of the greatest refs ever. He don’t mess up a lot of calls. When you’re going too far, he’ll give you a look. He’ll T your ass (give a technical foul), but he’s playful, he’s funny, he messes with you during a game, you bust his chops back. I would say that there’s a lot of coaches that he refs that you have a much different type of a relationship with Roger than you do with pretty much every other official.”
Ayers also downplayed the incident in comments made to ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg, the former Virginia Tech head coach.
“He’s a tremendous communicator. And he refereed a ton 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,’” Greenberg explained Monday on ESPN.
“But that situation right there, that is absolutely nothing. 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 and said something to me. I said something to him. It was absolutely nothing.’”
Ayers was not selected to work the Final Four, where No. 2 UConn will play No. 3 Illinois Saturday at 6:09 p.m. in Indianapolis. No. 1 Michigan will face No. 1 Arizona afterward.
The semifinal winners will play for the national championship Monday night.