You may remember a couple of weeks ago when Governor Matt Bevin stepped into a pile on Twitter. After congratulating the UK men’s basketball team on making the Elite Eight, UofL women’s coach Jeff Walz replied that his team was also in the Elite Eight and, sarcastically, said he would pass along the Governor’s congratulations to his players as well.
When questioned about the tweet, Coach Walz said the same thing had happened the year before, when the Cardinals made the Final Four. It was obvious that he did not want his players to be slighted simply because of gender.
Well, we thought this little Twitter beef was over. We should have known better. After years of observation, we should have realized Bevin has a hard time letting go.
Today, as he took to the air on the Leland Conway Show (remember what we said about Bevin and his issues with live radio?), the Governor decided it was time to rehash the issue.
Bevin said Coach Walz had focused on “silliness” and not on coaching his players.
“I feel bad saying this, but it’s true. If he’d been a little more focused on game strategy and coaching that weekend, and a little less on this kind of silliness, the better team would have won,” Bevin said. “We got outcoached, straight up.”
A few points to make here:
- Coach Walz is 332-99 in his time at UofL. That’s a winning percentage of .770, outstanding by any measure in college athletics.
- He has taken the UofL program to the Final Four three times in 11 years and has been the national runner-up twice.
- This year, they were the #1 seed in the tournament and lost to the #2 seed, UConn, who has dominated women’s basketball for years. We take exception to the fact that Bevin accused Walz of being “outcoached,” but if he was, there is no shame in that when lined up against Geno Auriemma, 11 time national champion and 8 time national coach of the year.
At the end of the day though, the real question is why didn’t Bevin just laugh off the first tweet by Walz, apologize for the omission and wish the women the best of luck? It’s just not in his DNA.
Inside The Connector 