Rodney Terry apologizes for showing up late to post-game press, cites 'extended talk' with team

The Texas Longhorns were taken down at home on Wednesday night, blowing a 12-point lead to the UCF Knights and falling by a score of 77-71. However, it wasn’t the action on the court that garnered the most attention from this game. No, it was what transpired during the handshake line between Texas head coach Rodney Terry and some of the UCF players.

As the two teams lined up and engaged in the postgame handshake tradition, Terry was caught on camera yelling at a few of the Knights players. It was later revealed that there were a handful of individuals, after the win, who were trolling the Longhorns men’s basketball team with the infamous ‘horns down’ hand sign.  

With that and the Longhorns dropping three of their last four games, Terry took to have an ‘extended talk’ with his players before taking the podium for his post-game press conference. Terry didn’t reveal the topic of the extended conversation but one has to assume it dealt with the team’s struggles of late which include freshly relinquishing a 16-point lead to drop the home game to UCF — which of course led to the Knights being able to celebrate in the fashion Terry disliked.

Rodney has since taken the podium and has addressed what went on between himself and the UCF players. He also apologized for showing up late to the Longhorns postgame press conference.

Terry addresses situation with UCF players

 In the postgame press conference, Terry gave a passionate answer about the situation and why he didn’t appreciate the gesture.

“I’m a big believer in you win the right way, you lose the right way,” Terry said. “I always tell my guys whether you win or lose, you win the right way, you lose the right way, you carry yourself the right way. You don’t go to the handshake line or prior to getting to the handshake line and have about six or seven guys putting the horns down. We don’t do that. Because when you do those kinds of things, it looks very classless and it also looks like you were just hoping to win. We never go into games trying to hope to win. We go into games expecting to win. So we don’t act like that. We expect to win.

“We don’t jump up and down like like we won a national championship — we sure don’t step on anyone’s home court deal and act crazy and try to show them up in any way, we don’t do that. So that’s what I was angry about. And I was letting those guys know you don’t do that. You guys won. Hey, we shake your hand, tip our hat to you. But we’re not gonna let you act that way in our building. You’re not gonna do that. You’re not gonna put your horns down and do all that nonsense.”

UCF coach Johnny Dawkins also addressed the situation, saying he would discuss the situation internally. He also acknowledged his relationship with Rodney Terry and Texas assistant Frank Haith, who used to coach at Tulsa.