Norman Transcript version:
One story, two sides
Coale, Neighbors have different takes on their postgame handshake
By Clay Horning
Transcript Sports Editor
SEATTLE — Only about 15 minutes earlier, Washington and Oklahoma had walked off the Alaska Airlines Arena court, the Huskies’ resounding 108-82 victors when, in the postgame press conference, a reporter asked Sooner coach Sherri Coale about a longer-than-normal exchange between her and Washington coach Mike Neighbors in the handshake line.
As it turned out, there were two fairly different accounts of that exchange, Coale’s and Neighbors’, and Coale’s side of it did not take long to tell.
“He was screaming at our fans, I thought he was screaming at me,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m not yelling at you, I’m yelling at your fans,’ which I don’t really understand.
“They were ahead by 30 and the game was over. I told him they played a great game, let’s just leave it at that. ‘You guys played a great game.’ And he said, ‘Yes, we did.’” Neighbors’ side of it is longer, less clear, often-times tangential and, in the middle of it, he appeared to betray feeling slighted because the Sooners had not referred to him or his coaching staff directly when complimenting his team.
He began, when asked about it during his postgame press conference, by saying he apologized to Coale for yelling at Sooner fans.
“I was apologizing to her and saying, ‘Hey, I hope you don’t take offense to that,’” he said.
Then it got strange.
“I was obviously not talking about them,” Neighbors said. “If anybody has been at our press conferences the last three days, I have mentioned them and their staff by name …about how much respect I have for them. So there was nothing to do with them.”
He kept going.
“Late in the game there, after I subbed … and they kept pressing. And their fans were still trying to win … I look down and a fan challenged me to come down there. I obviously couldn’t go down there,” he said. “Most of the time I am one of these guys that remembers three days later what I wish I would have said, but for the first time in my life it hit me what I needed to say. I said, ‘Hey I can’t come down there right now, but I am going to be in Oklahoma City.’” He will be in Oklahoma City. The Huskies pay Mississippi State in an Oklahoma City Regional semifinal inside Chesapeake Energy Arena at 6 p.m. Friday.
In the next stanza of his answer, which was continuous, he appeared to point out the slight.
“I am as competitive as all get out. I will not have any issue with their staff and with their team. We have the utmost respect,” he said. “Go back and read the press notes. I have mentioned them all by name multiple times. I did not see them mention us at all. I saw them call us talented and a lot of things like that.”
He kept going.
“I am not going to take that from a fan. If you are going to trap (reserve guard) Jenna Moser, who has done nothing but come out and practice with our kids to give up her time, I am going to fight for her,” Neighbors said. “You can say that’s the redneck coming out of me, but whatever, I am going to fight for my kids all the way through.”
He was right that the Sooners pressed and trapped for much of the fourth quarter, when the game was clearly out of reach. However, it’s very rare for a winning coach to question the tactics of the team his team just beat.
Finally, Nieghbors concluded.
“I have no beef with Sherri. I apologized to her, that is why it was a long handshake,” he said. “She gave me some [words] that, quite frankly, I will listen to and I will try to do differently next time. But when somebody hollers at me, I am going to holler back.”
Coale and Neighbors are not strangers.
The second-round NCAA tournament game was the third meeting between the two programs in three seasons. OU had won the previous two, once on each team’s home court. Those, however, were tight games.
Not this one.
Washington, indeed, played a great game.
Also, that’s not quite where the competitivism ended for the Huskies Monday night.
Clay Horning 366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com Follow me @clayhorning
