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By Andrew McCarty
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Earlier Tuesday afternoon UConn head coach Dan Hurley downplayed his aggressive standoff with official Roger Ayers after the Huskies improbable win over the Duke Blue Devils.
"Really, at that point in the game we had it won, and he’s such an easy guy to work with during the game, I thought he was coming over to chest-bump me and celebrate the shot," he joked in a recent podcast appearance. "It’s not like that for me with him … so that was in no way me going at a ref like I’ve been at their throat all game.
"There were other points in the game where I had my arm around him coming out of a timeout; we were cracking jokes and laughing. That was more like the emotion of the shot, and this is a cool [expletive] ref. He was just coming up to tell me there’s going to be 0.3 or 0.4 on the clock, and I was still so hyped about the shot going in."
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Ayers also downplayed the interaction when he told ESPN's Seth Greenberg that "nothing happened" with Hurley. Greenberg, a former longtime college basketball coach, added that Ayers "literally didn't know what I was talking about" and said that the interaction with Hurley was "absolutely nothing."
However, when the NCAA announced its officials for the Final Four, Ayers, a veteran referee who has officiated seven Final Fours, including last year's, was not listed among those participating in the event.
The Final Four tips off on Saturday, April 4. UConn squares off against Illinois with tip schedule for 6:09 p.m. ET on TBS, truTV and HBO Max.
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